Feds Consider Unprecedented Safety Rules for Tablesaws
JFink
| Posted in Tools for Home Building on
Well, you had to see this coming. Tablesaw research has shown that they cost more in healthcare than they make in sales. Some people applaud the progress toward change, others are up in arms.
Let the debate rage on!
https://www.finehomebuilding.com/item/20596/feds-consider-unprecedented-safety-rules-for-tablesaw
Replies
Impossible to make things idiot proof
But, idiots will always try to.
Impossible to make things idiot proof:
But, idiots will always try to.
Justin
While you're in the neighborhood, could you take care of un-captcha'ing the regulars here?
thanks.
Or they could just up the price of saws by a factor of 7 and put the 6 into an insurance fund to treat injuries.
Figures don't lie, but liars can figure.
Saw-stop is NOT 'just a $50 device." The only '$50" part is the cartridge .... the actual cost of adding the technology, as indicated by the price differences between SawStop saws and their competitors, is likely a couple hundred dollars- effectively doubling the cost of cheap saws like the Ryobi in the suit.
That's not considering the complete re-design of the saws themselves, in order to accept this device.
Is the cost worth it? Well, that question goes to the core of the issue: just how do we decide such matters. Do we assign it to a bureaucrat, play lawsuit lottery, or let the market decide? What sort of world do you want to live in?
Such action is not without precedent. Let's look at a few other industries:
The general avaition industry has been completely without a single new design since the 50's. The price of an aircraft is at least 50% composed of the liability insurance premium. Now you know why we all don't have airplanes in our garages.
Diving board manufacturing is limited to a handful of firms, that have chosen to operate completely without insurance- in facitities that haven't been upgraded for decades. Go ahead- sue. Good luck collecting. For the heirs: good luck selling.
Ever wonder why 'large companies' have such involved hiring procedures? Ever notice the firms using 'temp labor' for years on end? Such is inspired largely by the fear of lawsuits; and 'lawsuit' is just a fancy way of saying 'give me your money.'
Seems to me that some required safety features would reduce the liability of the manufacturer, not increase it.
Just a guess, but:
Every table saw injury I have witnessed (3), investigated (4), or discussed with the injured operator has a common underlying cause: Operator error. Predominately from lack of training. One of the guys that works for me nicked his finger tips, using a saw with not guards, freehanding a piece of pergo with no fence. He still insists that what he was doing was safe. I bought a new bosch saw for him to use, and an array of feather boards, and push sticks. If he gets injured again with out the guard in place, or the saw set up to use safely, I'll fire him.
I went to the PTI site, and watched their safe use video. It is lacking. Far less use of featherboards, hold downs, and hold ins, than I use. And, they are still propagating the old wives tail that a low blade is safer. There is no basis for the low blade, it is just something that has ben repeated so many times that everyone believes it. It might be ok with a riving knife, but if you have a good splitter, you are better off with the blade as high as it will go, so the space between the back of the blade and the splitter is as low as possible. Two of the accidents I witnessed were caused by the low blade. One with reaction wood that pinched the blade, and the other cutting nylon sheet stock, so that the edges of the carbide tips melted the plastic untill it stuck. Both would have not happened with the blade fully raised.
The saw stop has a bypass switch. Idiots will turn it off, and be injured. Just like there are people who refuse to wear seatbelts, and invest tiem and effort in figuring out how to bypass the seat sensor, or clipping the buzzer lead so they don't have to annoyed.
If we are going to insist that table saws be idoit proof, what about motor cycles. There are more motor cycle and atv accidents than tablesaw accidents, and the most expensive to treat are head injuries, that result when riders don't wear helmets. So, let's put interlock devices on motor cycles so that the rider has to wear a helmet or the engine won't start.
The solution isn't another expensive device, that will completely destroy jobsite class saws as a market segment. It is training the problem is that every idiot thinks they can run power tools.
The saw stop has a bypass switch. Idiots will turn it off, and be injured. Just like there are people who refuse to wear seatbelts, and invest tiem and effort in figuring out how to bypass the seat sensor, or clipping the buzzer lead so they don't have to annoyed.
Sure, idiots will turn it off, just as some won't put on a seatbelt and actively try to bypass the seatbelt indicators. I can tell you are over 40, because you actually REMEMBER when people did this! Heck, I remember someone trying to sell me a used car that had the seatbelts cut out!
But I've not seen anything like that in years - except for maybe 1 in 10 immagrent cabbies. It's a culture thing, and wearing seatbelts is IN the American culture now, where is was just getting ingrained as little as 30 years ago.
As far as the safety device on a saw being disabled, I suspect that will culture out pretty quick. How many rivening knives were available on cheap saws 5 years ago? Until the Bosch 4100 - NO ONE had them as far as I know. But Bosch intruduced them, and now I just saw a $120 cheapo saw at Lowes, with rivening knife AND the more advanced blade guard first seen on the 4100.
While blade guards might still come off, why would you bother to remove a rivening knife? That's what it really comes down too... why bother NOT using the safety device?
There's a reason you're seeing the riving knives: In 2009, Underwriters Laboratories will require that all new table saw designs include a riving knife. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riving_knife
The same thing is likely to happen with the SawStop technology -- not government regulations, but the insurance industry requiring the change.
Almost no one
" Until the Bosch 4100 - NO ONE had them as far as I know"
I've been using a Ryobi BT3000 for the past 15 years and it has a riving knife; the original one is built into the blade cover, tho, so I made my own cut-down riving knife modeled after those on Inca saws; it works perfectly and lets me do part-way groove cuts (dados) using the standard blade.
Comparing the current price of a Ryobi and a SawStop is a little ridiculous... that's like comparing a Ryobi to a Ryobi clone that I made by hand... They can sell theirs for a couple hundred, I would have to sell mine for thousands as I'm a much smaller company starting from scratch without the tooling, existing sales networks, and brand recognition that Ryobi has. Of course SawStop is more expensive that Ryobi!
A Lotus is more expensive than a Toyota, even though the Lotus uses a Toyota engine. A small boutique shop can't compete with a large mass marketer on price.
As for "No new airplane designes since the 50's"... well, you haven't been paying attention to Rutan then. But there hasn't been a major new automobile design since 1910 - they are all vehicals with engines anf four tires. Motorcycles are even worse - 2 tires and an engine!
tablesaw regulations Soviet style
Watching this story develop is like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Once you had an attorney who saw an opening, and how fast he was able to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, it was only a matter of time. All the lap dogs jumped into the fray, with no understanding of who makes these decisions and how they are made. When I saw this pop up after the litigation went awry, I sold my contractor's saw and bought a brand new Grizzly cabinet saw. I am set for life now and will be just as careful with my work as I have been in the last 30 years.
I think everyone knows that this attorney has claimed patents on "safety devices" for EVERY power tool known to man. Does ANYONE think for a second that he cares one iota about safety? He is going to introduce, or try to introduce safety devices for as many power tools as he can. All he has to do is wait for some idiot to hurt themselves, get them to sue the manufacturer, and low and behold, he will be there to help "suggest" wording to mandate a device that just happens to look a LOT like what he has. This is so clear to me, I don't understand why no one has stopped this guy for conflict of interest.
This is regulation run amok and he is there with the perfect storm. This can't end well for those of us who understand the risk and account for it. We will be brought down by the lowest common denominator. And don't anyone dare spew something about saving one finger or one hand. This is not what it is being touted. There is only one way to protect our bodies and that is to be rested, concentrate on what we are doing and don't take risks....none of which was done by the dummy apprentice using the Ryobi tablesaw in the lawsuit. THis is not going to end well.
+++
I'm hearing a lot of anti-government griping, but no one's argued with the figures.
Highways are the safest they've ever been, thanks to "government meddling".
Airplane travel is exceptionally safe, thanks to "government meddling".
The food you buy is safe to eat, thanks to "government meddling".
Doctors are licensed, thanks to "government meddling".
"Government meddling" has provided us with mail service, gas and electric service, radio and television, the internet, Interstate highays, and many other things that we take for granted.
I'm seeing hard facts on the one side, and an emotional, knee-jerk reaction on the other. Which side should be given more credence?
re: government meddling
If we follow your observations all the way to the logical end, I would suggest that we should hold up North Korea as our model!! No meddling left to be done there! And before you roll your eyes and call me crazy, please tell me where along the line to tyranny should we stop? You bring up highways, call them the safest they've ever been...based on what? and during what period of time? And what sort of government meddling contributes to it? I don't see it.
Airplane travel is safe. frankly, if the government got out of the way, and we got rid of the TSA, it would be safer and more efficient. Please cite one bad guy the TSA has caught!! The most recent collar was by local police. And the planes themselves incorporate things invented by the private sector. Food has been safe for years, thanks to inventions by private parties. Your logic is really not functioning or evident here.
As for the tablesaw issue, this is a case of an attorney using the system to rob us of freedom to choose whether to PAY for something we may want to use or not. If I were teaching kids, I would certainly request this system. But I am not and I have used a tablesaw safely for 30 years. I dont NEED the nanny state who ISNT making things safer to come tell i have to do anything. I really wish you and those like you who can't seem to grasp the loss of freedom every time the government takes over something they really don't know anything about would open your eyes! Do you honestly think that a bunch of suits in a centralized location will make better decisions than you or I for our own shops?? Really? Because if you do, you have lost your real vision of freedom in our country. And you have thrown away the very restrictions put in place in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Step by step it is being stolen from us.
UT
I can't agree with you less.
Business does not have the consumers in mind like you think they do.
You think food is safe with no govt. inspection?
Would emission reduction be implemented w/o mandates?
Fill in the blanks with numerous other things that affect the public-still satisfied that w/o govt. setting standards and monitoring you wouldn't be negatively impacted?
I would question the numbers, simply because every advocacy group inflates their statistics and assumes they will go without question.
The open question is how much will be spent on destroyed blades and new cartridges from false trips and whether this will actually cut the injury rate to the assumed "zero".
BTW "seatbelts" is not the proper analogy. Airbags would be closer (a one shot, expensive device that might go off in error).
There are people who have been in rear end collisions where the air bags were the most expensive part of the repair, only challenged by the government mandated 5 mph bumper that costs $1000 in a 6mph crash.
The examples you forward are industry decisions
Airbags are expensive because they are model specific, and sold mostly through the dealer network at rip off prices far exceeding their true cost of production.
Same with five mile an hour bumpers. Your implying that bumpers were less expensive before the advent of the five mile an hour rule. The weren't. The purpose of the rule was to put a halt to things like the nerf bars on Corvettes, that were readily destroyed if a shopping cart rolled into them in the parking lot.
When the manufacturers were shining about how much the five mile an hour bumpers were going to cost, Pete Coor's, (of the Coor's beer family), made a low cost five mile an hour bumper for his jeep CJ5, out of a peice of 2X8, two six-pacs, a couple of feet of reddi rod, and a couple of springs. He drilled two holes through the stock bumper, routed recesses into the face of the 2X8 to receive the unbound end of the six-pacs, bolted the 2X8 onto the bumper with the six-pacs held in place by the reddi rod and springs. At low speeds nothing happened when he rolled the jeep into a concrete wall. At speeds of about 8 to 13-miles an hour the six-pacs burst, without damage to stock bumper. The cost to "repair" was the cost of two new six-pacs. He still holds a patent for antifreeze and air filled beer cans for use as energy dissipating devices in vehicle bumpers. And, is probably still willing to license tme for free to any manufacturer who wants to use them.
The 5mph bumper was at the behest of the insurance companies. They hid behind the lack of such a standard to justify raising rates (when in fact they were losing the money speculating on the stock market, not due to MVA claims). The government, after much pressure from the public (who were subjected to an advertising frenzy from the insurance companies), called their bluff.
But out of the 5mph bumper deal came regulations requiring that bumpers at least more or less match up (though it took about another decade to get that rule to stick). This actually saves lives.
You can pooh-pooh air bags, but they have saved A LOT of lives. And here the government didn't push the concept, but was "pulled" by the auto companies who, despite public whining, privately wanted the government to require air bags so that all manufacturers (especially importers) would be on an equal basis (since some brands were already adding air bags both as an advertising gimmick and to reduce liability exposure).
Much of what the government does in terms of safety regulations and the like is at the behest of manufacturers, insurance companies, an the like. The companies, of course, don't want to admit this, since they'd rather blame the government for new regulations (and the associated costs) rather than admit who wanted them.
Traffic fatalities per mile have dropped by a third in the past 15 years, and by a factor of 3 since 1980, which is to say there are about 60,000 fewer fatalities per year than if 1980 standards applied (not to mention significant reductions in non-fatal injuries). Placing a conservative value of $2 million on each life ($5+ million is used in many computations) that's $120 billion per year (not counting the substantial savings in medical costs for those not killed). There are roughly 5.5 million new cars sold in the US each year, and guestimating an average price of $30k per, we get total sales around $165 billion.
So the savings in loss of life covers about 75% of the cost of new cars. Or, another way to look at it, one would have to tack about $22K onto the price of a new car to cover the human costs had safety not improved. Of course, not all of that is due to improvements in cars -- roads have improved as well. But even the most conservative assumptions would figure to about $10K per vehicle.
So What?!
You talk as though cost savings is the end all of the arguement.There are more important issues at stake here.
So how many dollars are you willing to sell your soul ( rights) for ?
So What?!
You talk as though cost savings is the end all of the arguement.There are more important issues at stake here.
So how many dollars are you willing to sell your soul ( rights) for ?
Wrong
The travel ways belong to the govt so it is their duty to keep them safe as they can. My table saw belongs to me so it is no of their business.
Food is safe thanks to govt?!?!?!??!
ROTFLMAO over that gag line
Doctor licensing comes to you thankls to the AMA type groups
If you want to use hard facts to make an argument, go get some first, and double check that they are right instead of your own imagination
When did the "device" go way
When did the "device" go way down to fifty bucks?
Govt subsidy in progress here?
Every article I have ever read puts the price form 250 to 400, PLUS 40 or so for every time you trigger it for a replacement cartridge
who cares???
Calvin,
So you think the attorney who owns this patent and is forcing the Consumer agency to use his wording to write the new law has your best interests in mind? Are you freaking kidding me? He has conflict of interest, captive audience and ambulance chasing on his resume. I'll take the corporations any day of the week. Their intentions are clear and out front. Guys like this attorney will take your money all day long. And you can be sure they can have YOURS!!!
It's funny how you like to rag on this lawyer as being a crook... as that is exactly the kind of lawyer you would hire to represent you - one that gets the job done!
You don't bet on a fight based on which person is a nicer guy!
slimey lawyers
or am I being redundant?
Actually, this sort of attorney is the kind of person that I not only would NOT hire, I would not accept him as client under any circumstances!! How's that? You make assertions about which you know nothing...something I see often from people who think they know everything.
I am at odds with his conflict of interest versus his so called concern about safety. While the "free spirits" regurgitate homiles about ugly corporations, they give this guy a pass because they haven't stopped to think about what he's doing. He IS a crook and the government is going to be a co-conspirator with him.
I hope you can see that aspect. Because if you can't, I suggest YOU hire him!!!
Actually it comes down to our current societies overall failings
We have given up informed consent, mostly because too many people lack the skills to be informed enough to make the decision.
The society is headed down hill fast, because after WWII, we quit valuing and teaching civics and social responsiblility. We now have an electorat who is unqualified to make informed decisions. If you have any doubt take ten seconds and reflect on the quality do decisions that have been made by the politicians they elect.
society's failings...
I see your point and don't disagree with your evaluation, and the results are clear. However, when our media is consistenly AWOL and/or misrepresenting ALL the news, those who only get their news from the drive by media take whatever they say as the gospel. They hear that this case is legitimate and there is a new and better safety device...voila, what's not to like?? Except they left out anything germaine to the discussion that shed light on the process, including the serious conflict of interest.
Our local paper published an article that had some serious errors in it and I submitted a correction with data 2 1/2 weeks ago. They have refused to print my facts, which they could have documented themselves. The paper preferred to go with the liberal agenda, in this case, and ignore the facts presented to them. This was on a small scale, but it is repeated over and over all over the country. It's no wonder there are such "overall failings". Thanks for your comment.
ut
the way you write, I'm not surprised.
Me neither
Hey Calvin,
I forgot that you were the consummate wordsmith. Judging from your posts, I'm sure you must have the talent for terse and pointed comments that hit the bullseye with force.....I just can't find them yet!! But I'm sure you could demonstrate how you would phrase something so the media would latch on to it. For them to like it however, it would have to be devoid of anything conservative and it would have to cater to ethnic minorities. I'm also sure your strength in vocabulary would put you in the perfect position for accomplishing that. just tell us when you plan on showing us!!! I'm all eyes and ears for your thorough content and substance. (I'll be sure and watch out for that "sucker punch"...it's SO classy) Bring it on!!! Oh, you don't have to stay on topic if you don't want to. We understand.
My apologies.
That's all you got?