Table Saw Accident Victims Plea For Safety Standards

[BuilderBill]

Accidents happen, but you cant regulate stupid......

Sancho, well said! But our representatives in DC seem Hell-bent on accomplishing the impossible, or at the least conning the majority in their district into thinking they did.....

... I am a libertarian bordering on anarchist so you can imagine what I think about this.... Freedom baby!

I'm sort of a clumsy idiot and have never once blamed an inanimate object for any injury unless it outright failed under normal use (eg, don't blame the screwdriver for breaking when you use it as a pry bar).

Bryan, I feel your pain... I'm a clumsy idiot libertarian bordering on a left-wing Commie-Pinko-Q-word but, somehow or other, I never got around to blaming the majority of the population for my clumsiness.

C'mon, people, do the math: 40,000/308,000,000= .0132987% of the current US population as of 2010. But any of the rest of the 307,960,000 of us will have to pay the price if we want to buy a table saw? Girls Gone Wild pales in comparison....

What we need is a new show broadcast daily on all the major networks between the local news and the national news: "Government Gone Wild". Maybe someone would pay attention.... But I doubt it.

Just my $.02 worth,

Bill

[Beechwood Chip]

Not that I disagree, folks, but remember that politics is one of the few forbidden topics in this forum (religion and anything not "family friendly" are the others, if I remember correctly). Let's walk it back a little.

[DeanJackson]

Let the market decide, not the government. I can't believe how many sheeppeople feel the government must protect them, instead of themselves taking responsibility for their choices and actions. We're "supposed" to be a free country.

Let the people decide, not the "movement" paid for by a company owned by a patent lawyer. If enough people want the government to legislate this, that *is* part of living in a Democracy. If those people are paid shills of some corporation, that holds a lot less weight.

[wigster]

Hi Folks

New to the forum but found this discussion interesting

Most of our power tools (which we all love) have some danger involved and some legislations insist on certain safety measures

For instance, here in the UK none of our table saws are capable of taking a dado blade due to the arbor being too short, manufacturers have to make them this way because to use a dado blade you have to remove the blade guard and riving knife, which in this country is illegal, imagine if this was the case in the US how many of you rely on a dado blade for all manor of things?

I would love to have a dado blade to cut grooves and the like instead of a router table but that decision is taken from me, which I belive is the basis of the thread

I wonder what percentage of the 40k people who sustained injuries were doing something they shouldn't, I know of a couple of cases were accidents were caused by this, one guy was freehand crosscutting on a table saw and another was cutting a 2" piece of a length of timber on a mitre saw, by holding the 2" end!!

So yes, these tools can be dangerous but so is crossing the road, should it not be down to our own common sense to carry out operations in a safe and competent manor and not have the procedure dictated to us

Thanks for listening

[harmsdph]

Let the market decide, not the government. I can't believe how many sheeppeople feel the government must protect them, instead of themselves taking responsibility for their choices and actions. We're "supposed" to be a free country.

not sure i can say it any better.

[tim0625]

I'm fine with asking vendors to improve their products, but it should be a voluntary thing. Mandating sawstop-like stuff is just silly.

I'm with Colonel Peck...while safety improvements are always a good thing, competition, price, and necessity should drive that part of the market. Government regulation is in our lives too much already and I think that politicians have much bigger fish to fry. Regular use of push sticks, awareness, and patience are our best allies with our power tools; but hey...if you use a SawStop, more power to you - they do seem to have the bugs worked out.

[tim0625]

It goes with out saying that this is a complicated issue.

I have to laugh when people say that the government is mandating these changes. If you think there are any members of congress, the senate or your local government who are giving any thought to whether you have a safe table saw or not, I think you are crazy. The lobbyists and the lawyers are the ones stirring the pot. Government, much like a judge, has to listen to the argument and make a decision, (even if it is lobbyists 'helping' them make that decision).

This big push for the 'SawStop" technology all started with the lawsuit in Boston, where a day laborer, who didn't know how to use a saw, cut his hand. So who do you really blame--the day laborer who was told to go use a saw that he was not trained to use? or his lawyer who saw a way to sue and make a butt load of money off Ryobi? or Ryobi because they didn't take advantage of an expensive piece of technology when they had the chance? The truth is, this really isn't an argument about the home woodworker/carpenter. At the government level- this is an argument about work place safety. And that is a place that i believe, that YES, the government should step in and set regulations. Because I have news for you--the suits that run the company, don't really care how many fingers you have at the end of the day--especially if it is going to cost them even $.25.

For the home woodworker or local cabinetmaker, capitalism alone can and will be the driving force behind such safety standards. I don't think the lobbyists or the government really know, or care, what you do in your basement workshop. I would argue that there must to be regulation in the workplace. If regulation wasn't necessary, and corporations did what was best for the workers, then we wouldn't need unions. If you don't know about the Traingle ShirtWaist fire--you need to stop and google it now.

The other player that has not been talked about is the insurance companies. After all, it's the insurance companies who run this country isn't it? The insurance companies are already pushing for SawStop's to be used in the workplace. All they have to do is say that your premiums are going to go thru the roof, unless you adopt this safety technology. Again, the suits don't care how many fingers you have, only if it is going to cost them $.25 more.

Lighthearted,

I think you answered your own question already...it's the lobbyists and attorneys and I will add, weak, spineless courts that drive a lot of things. As a professional in the insurance business, I can tell you when a lady has an accident with a cup of coffee and makes a million dollars off of it, something's wrong and it's not the insurance company's fault. The insurance companies are trying to protect their own behinds in most cases because the court system often sees life in such a way that anyone encountering misfortune seemingly should be rewarded money from someone - even if the 'bad guy' did something illegal. Guy breaks into a home at night and the homeowner kills him. Bad guy's family sues the homeowner. Court awards big money to the bad guy's family from the homeowner's policy. Homeowner looses a "loss free discount" because the policy paid out and THEN the homeowner's rates may increase or the policy EVEN GETS CANCELLED.(that's another beef I have with companies - my own included). Guy steals car and wrecks it and THEN sues the car owner because of whatever dribble an ambulance chaser can come up with. An insurance company claims adjuster settles for $10,000 or $20,000 because they know in court, a [wrongfully] sympathetic jury says 'poor bad guy...he didn't have a mommy...gives him a million dollars'. If the courts would look at cases where the 'bad guy' is trying to get something he doesn't deserve and throw him out, things would run smoother. As a kid, I just knew there were some petitions I didn't even need to approach dad with. Point, a kid learns what he can 'get away with'. Courts need to wise up.

[usacomp2k3]

As a professional in the insurance business, I can tell you when a lady has an accident with a cup of coffee and makes a million dollars off of it, something's wrong and it's not the insurance company's fault.

I would highly recommend you finding another example (there are plenty). That specific case, McDonald's was definitely at fault. The temperature on the coffee pot was something like 25 degrees hotter than corp. guidelines and the lady received 2nd degree burns over her pubic area and completely destroyed her reproductive abilities. It was the extreme temperature of the liquid that resulted in the case win, that's it. And I think that it was deserved.

[Static_23]

where i work i aways have to put safety gaurds on and make them. That said, there are so many dump people out there and or people that just don't pay attention to what they do.

its like saying guns kill people not people kill people. its never the operators fault its always the equipment. people need to take ownertship of their own actions!!!

[markhochstein]

While I am also seriously opposed to the majority of government intervention, safety is one of the few times that I am willing to bend a little. As a safety professional I can tell you that I can make a very short list of the number of safety features I use each day that were not mandated by the government, but the list of those that were mandated by the government is very long - too long - in fact, but they have saved thousands if not tens of thousands of lives. Unfortunately most of the time it does not make economic sense for companies to spend money on safety features because those features are not near the top of the list of what consumers look for. In fact, I remember a time when companies were not required to put the little nubs on the bottom of a bicycle fork to keep the wheel from falling off if it came loose. I have crowns on my two front teeth to prove that it can happen. Later, the government required it because we couldn't get bicycle manufactures to literally spend pennies to put that feature on.

Industry is crying that it will raise the cost of saws by hundreds of dollars. I think it's BS. It posturing, plain and simple. The same posturing we've seen in every industry that's faced any kind of government mandate of safety devices. If the government mandates some sort of flesh-sensing technology on table saws then you will see several companies come out with viable alternatives to SawStop and the volume of production will bring the cost down to negligible within a few years just like it's done with all the other required safety items we deal with every day. In 10 years you won't even think of buying a saw without that technology just like you wouldn't buy a car today without air bags.

Industry has had five years to come up with a competitive response to SawStop, but they didn't. They kept hoping it would go away - as court documents show in the OneWorld case. It's time to make them get off their rumps and come up with a solution. When Government mandates things like this, it's never done swiftly. The table saw manufacturers will have a couple of years to get their act together, and I'm betting that they've already got a plan should they "have" to use it.