Nope. The "government" didn't make them mandatory, the people did.
Problem is, for every action there's a reaction. We've now proven that the more you protect fools from themselves, the more fools you will have.
Google for "licensing". He could let others manufacture it and take a cut from each sale, nothing new or novel there.
Was that before, or after, he tried to force all of them to put the device on their saws? If after, I can see why they'd tell him to pound sand.
Airbag technology was implemented in the US before it was ready. Seat belts, on the other hand, were in use in the 1940s by some, but weren't mandated until much later. Some European makes had 3-point belts in all
4 seating positions back in the early '60s, which wasn't mandated in the US until at least 15 years later.Car companies who felt that safety was a valid design requirement were using these things before they were mandatory. I'm not sure your point holds water.
Nobody forces me to wear eye and ear protection when using certain machines, but I do. So, I'd say "quite a bit;what's your point"?
They tried to push it to the FAA but the FAA didn't bite. It's amazing that they were successful with Congress. However even there, airbags are not mandatory--it's a "supplemental restraint system" and airbags are apparently just the easiest way to do it.
As for seat belts, the public didn't want seat belts. Ford tried them and people perceived that Fords must be dangerous if they need seat belts so sales went down. So Ford stopped making them standard. Later when they were mandated it put all the manufacturers on an equal footing, which was the main benefit of the legislation. But still, a lot of people resented the government intruding into their lives to that extent.
Probably about as much as there is. What specifically is (a) there because the government has mandated it and (b) wouldn't be there regardless and (c) actually improves safety?
Not necessarily. If he's tooled up to produce the parts for the whole industry then he's likely to be able to sell them for less than any individual saw manufacturer can make them, so most would end up buying his kit instead of reinventing the wheel.
Didn't he offer to do that, without any takers?
Are you talking about your home shop or your workplace (they may be the same, I don't know)?
If it's a shop where you work as an employee, how much say do you have in how good a dust collection system is installed? Does your employer take input from employees on emergency exits and whether they are unlocked during working hours? The number of fire extinguishers available and how often they are certified?
You really don't have to look too hard to see that employee safety and the public good are not very high on the priority list of most companies. You can have the great majority of mining companies dedicated to protecting the environment and employee safety, but if those things aren't regulated, they are going to have trouble competing with the companies that don't care, because people are going to gravitate for the most part to the best price. It's hard to justify paying more for a load of coal (or whatever) when you don't see the dead miners or live near the polluted streams.
To bring this back to the specific from the general, I don't know if the SawStop (or a similar technology) should be mandatory, but I don't dismiss it out of hand. I see too many areas where companies don't have my best interests at heart.
And until it was mandated, the chances of getting seat belts on an entry level car was pretty much nil.
This is not a perfect analogy, because the SawStop technology is a much higher percentage of the price of the product than seat belts or airbags. But I remember that one of the arguments against airbags was that the cost would be prohibitive. Putting them in every car lowered the unit cost considerably. It's reasonable to assume that the same thing would happen with the SawStop.
How about:
Guard rails Accessible exits Limits on noise exposure Limits on exposure to dangerous volatile chemicals Eye and face protection Guards around belts and pulleys Disconnect (panic) switches Saw guards Limit to number of hours worked and mandated breaks
You find a lot more at:
Specific woodworking machine requirements are at:
It's reasonable to assume that many if not most of the regulations are there because some shops or manufacturers were not meeting the standard. I think it's easy to look at things the way they are now and assume that they've always been that way or would have happened without being required.
As to whether any particular thing does not improve safety, I'd be surprised if there weren't some. What do you have in mind in particular?
That's possible. But he's not tooled up, he's contracting it out to Taiwan or China, the same as the major tool companies. Without the patent protection, what's to keep them from contracting with the same Asian manufacturers? It's hard to believe that they couldn't get it made cheaper without having to pay a patent license.
And, if they would buy it from him anyway, then there's no reason for him to put his patents in the public domain.
Hank Gillette responds:
And Ford had lap belts in '57, as an option. No one wanted them.
You paid for it without it being hidden in the overall vehicle pricing, though you had to buy a Ford to get it. And memory doesn't serve well enough for me to recall whether or not it was an "entry level" car or not.
By the way, WTF is an entry level car?
Charlie Self "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." Sir Winston Churchill
Guard rails for _what_?
Necessary to get stuff out when you go to deliver it. I've never heard of exiting from a woodshop being any kind of problem.
ROF,L. You've never actually watched "safety engineers" work, have you? I remember a couple of them spending about $15K out of my budget to tell me that I didn't need a $20 set of earmuffs.
So to which "dangerous and volatile chemicals" is the exposure in a tyhpical wood shop "limited"?
See "noise exposure" above.
I don't recall there being very many unguarded belts and pulleys anywhere that anybody was likely to bump into them before OSHA. Somebody getting caught in the machinery generally caused a work stoppage and spoiled whatever work they bled all over, so there was an economic incentive to do this.
Again, I don't recall any paucity of big read buttons before OSHA.
Ditto.
That's funny, I thought the _union_ got _that_.
Which doesn't tell us that they've changed anything, just that they've justified their existence by releasing a flood of paper.
More paper. Paper doesn't impress me.
It's reasonable to assume that most of the regulations are there because some bureaucrat, possibly one who had never been within 50 miles of an actual working shop, decided that they were a good idea.
My favorite, in a different context, was a big press at a Fortune 500 aerospace contractor. It was installed before WWII, and there had never been an injury associated with its use. Nonetheless, the safety people decided that it needed a guard to comply with OSHA regs (the same safety people that spent $15K to save the cost of a set of earmuffs). So they put a guard on it, approved by the safety people. In the next year there were four injuries caused by the guard.
A Taiwanese shop tooled up to produce 10,000 of something can still sell them for less than ten Taiwanese shops tooled up to produce 1,000 each. Sure, the tool manufacturers could each have a shop tool up to make their lot, but one that has a contract with Sawstop would likely have a non-compete clause in the contract.
Of course there is. It's called a "symbolic gesture" or "act of good faith".
The chance of getting seat belts on just about any American car from 1960 or so on was almost 100%, _if_ you ordered them or asked the dealer to install them. All of them that I remember had the hard points in place.
Or not as the case may be.
Home shop(s). But you seemed to be saying that people don't take precautions unless forced to by governmental decree, and I think that the fact that it's a home shop shows even more so that they will.
When I worked in manufacturing, the employers most certainly did listen to that sort of suggestion. One, a tiny company, the other a huge international mega-corp whose name rhymes with, say, "GE".
My personal experience differs profoundly with your statement.
If you say so.
Right now, they can't even make it _work_ so why should I be forced to buy one for all of my saws?
Was it? My dad put seatbelts in the back of our 1964 Ford Falcon, maybe the fronts too. Just because it doesn't ship with them doesn't mean you can't install them properly and safely.
Lets let 'em get a working model first. Demo units do not equal a product.
I don't disagree with that. I'd like to see some production models and statistics before I'd be in favor of it being required equipment.
I've certainly heard of deaths in factories because the emergency exits were locked.
That wasn't my intent to say that. My intent was to say that it's not always that high a priority with a company.
So GE dumped all of those PCBs in the Hudson River for the public good?
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