Table Saw Safety & The CPSC

[Lobby Dosser]

These folks tell you where to lodge your opinion. I Know you have one.

[SonomaProducts.com]

"The US Consumer Products Safety Commission is considering new safety regulations for table saws, based on a petition asking for a requirement that table saws should be equipped with a device to reduce or prevent injuries."

Gosh, I wonder what company could have filed that petition?

I actually love my Sawstop but I have heard the guy behind it is a lawyer (and a jerk) and part of the reason nobody licensed his technology was he was to greedy. Oh well, he got my money. P.S. I have not met him or have any personal knowledge os his ahole-ness just passing along what I heard.

[knuttle]

>>>This is a lawyer law. Safety regulation should be based on facts.

How many fingers have been cut of per year per table saw in the last 100 years of their existence.

I suspect that the cost of the saw stop far exceeds the cost to society repairing cut of fingers. Cost of the saw stop must include cost to put it on the saw plus the cost of repairing the saw after the emergency stop.

The more safety device the more people assume there is no danger in using the tool, so since people will assume they are safe with the saw stop there will be more accidents with the saw.

[CW]

>>>This is a lawyer law. Safety regulation should be based on facts.

How many fingers have been cut of per year per table saw in the last 100 years of their existence.

I suspect that the cost of the saw stop far exceeds the cost to society repairing cut of fingers. Cost of the saw stop must include cost to put it on the saw plus the cost of repairing the saw after the emergency stop.

The more safety device the more people assume there is no danger in using the tool, so since people will assume they are safe with the saw

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The Germans were hesitant to issue parachutes to their pilots because they thought that if pilots had a way out, they wouldn't try to save the plane. stop there will be more accidents with the saw.

[HeyBub]

When I worked for the Exploration and Production laboratories of Shell Oil, we had a pretty loose consideration of safety rules, relying mostly on common sense. Then we got a new Vice President, recently reassigned from Shell's other lab on the west coast. He was absolutely nutty about safety.

He implemented a rule that all gas bottles had to be chained to the wall!

Sure enough, a fellow pushing a cart with two dewars of liquid nitrogen passed a stack of gas bottles, the same stack he had passed every day for years.

He hit the stack with his cart.

Even though the bottles were chained, he knocked one bottle of nitrogen loose. It fell and knocked off the valve. Like a torpedo, it went through the wall and into the parking lot.

Safety rules vs. being alert. Which to choose? Let me think...

[Stuart]

And how many more bottles would have done the same if they hadn't been chained up?

Both!

[Dave Balderstone]

I recall that when ABS brakes were installed in police cruisers, collisions increased for just that reason.

[Swingman]

And why most of the driving population today, who have no idea or respect for the engineering principles behind braking an automobile because they were never taught the basics, including that brakes FAIL, see no problem with driving five feet behind the car in front of them at

80mph.

I swear, younger female drivers appear to be the worst of the bunch. My own daughter, as much as I fuss, will drive 30 mph up to a stop sign and put on the brakes at the last possible moment.

[Lee Michaels]

"Swingman" wrote

As some one who has had two major incidents where my brakes did fail, I can relate. I obsessively look for the emergency brake in each vehicle I drive. I was always safety conscious. I can not imagine what would have happened if I wasn't. Nothing like a near death experience to get the safety religion.

[Larry Jaques]

The problem with today's drivers is that most of them can't even steer, let alone DRIVE a vehicle. I believe in mandatory emergency (or performance) driving courses and mandatory gun handling courses for every citizen. We'd eliminate a lot of our vehicular deaths and maimings plus reduce the number of criminals if we'd face that. People wouldn't be afraid of guns or cars nearly as much as they are now.

Soccer Moms are second, followed by hormonal male teenagers.

Today's tidbit of wisdom: The definition of a jerk is "someone driving slower than you are." The definition of a maniac is "someone driving faster than you."

-- Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

[Steve Turner]

But the real question is, once she gets there does she wait for the stop sign to turn green, then with no real idea whose TURN it is, negotiates using mysterious visual cues with the other drivers to see who's going to take the initiative? "Right of way" - what's that? :-)

[Dave Balderstone]

Ah yes, the triple S's...

Skirt on a cellphone in a Sunfire. See them spun out in ditches everywhere, all winter long.

[Larry Jaques]

I was doing about 75 in a rural area, half crocked, when my master cylinder bypassed. After the third time my foot hit the floor with the pedal under it, I dropped into third, then second, then missed my turn. I had to go over a deep swale where the other road was a straighter shot than the 70 degree turn I had wanted. Just before I hit the swale, I popped the wheel to the left, then quickly right, and shoved the tail over a foot and a half to the left, aiming at the hole between two lines of parked cars. I bounced over it and stayed between the cars until it slowed down a bit. I think I hit that 15mph bump at at least 45. Thank Crom for the Javelin's strong rear leafs, but it bottomed those out.

Even shitfaced, I pulled it out where a typical driver would have t-boned a car or rolled it into a house. Some skills and a whole lot of luck.

Luckily, I sobered up not too long after that, and sobriety has lasted

27+ years now.

-- Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

[CW]

As some one who has had two major incidents where my brakes did fail, I can relate. I obsessively look for the emergency brake in each vehicle I drive. ==================================================================== You'd like my Ranger. To apply the E-brake, you have to stick your left knee in your ear to get your foot high enough.

[Lobby Dosser]

I resemble that! Got in it one time after my wife had driven it and the damn e-brake was on. Took a while to figure what was wrong as it never occurred to me that somebody could set the damn thing.

[Larry Jaques]

'Tis a foolish person who does not know the operation of and USES the emergency brake on a daily basis.

-- Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

[Larry Blanchard]

Amen to that.

I'm old enough to remember when teenage boys were the most reckless drivers, but that appears to have been only because most teenage girls back then didn't drive.

And quite a few of those boys (myself included) were good enough drivers to get out of most of the situations our overactive hormones got us into.

I've learned the hard way to keep my mouth shut when my wife is driving, and she's a lot better than most.

[Larry W]

More likely any increase in accidents was due to lack of training. People using ABS for the first time often thought there was a brake system defect when they experienced the pedal pulsation the ABS causes when it is active and let up on the brakes. And people who were trained to pump the brakes in poor traction continued to do so with ABS, resulting in reduction inn braking performance.

[Larry W]

There's a good reason all manufacturers officially refer to them as PARKING brakes rather than EMERGENCY brakes. They are better than no brakes in an emergency, but (varying with different vehicles) not by much.

[Lee Michaels]

I was driving a friends pickup when the brakes failed. It had a weird emergency brake that was under the steering wheel and pulled horizontally. When the brakes gave out, I was moving at a pretty good clip down the street and a bunch of cars were in front of me, waiting at a light. I went to pull the brake and discovered to my horror, that I could not pull it hard enough to stop the vehicle. I had to lean over to the right to get enough leverage to stop the truck. But then, I could not see out the windshield. So I quickly calculated where I would steer to get the truck off the road and not hit the cars in front of me. I steered with one hand and pulled on the brake with the other hand. And hoped nothing terrible would happen..

When it was all over, I looked up and discovered I had just missed a utility pole by inches and another parked truck by inches. Somehow I had stopped the truck in between those two things, not hit anything and got the truck almost all the way off the road, up onto the sidewalk. Once I realized what happened, I just started to shake and sweat. I took a couple minutes to calm down, walked to the corner and made a call. And I yelled a lot. I was really upset. He came out and towed the truck away. I did not drive the truck after that.

The other time was in my own vehicle. It was a very straightforward foot emergency brake on the left side. Easy to get at and very effective. I was going down a steep hill towards a major street. The brakes failed. There was nobody else around, no traffic or pedestrians. I stomped on the emergency brake and the truck started to swerve a little. I had to release the brake a couple times to get the vehicle under control. I ended up going off the road into a parking lot. It was a little scary, but it was just me and the truck.

When I stopped, I looked up to see where I was and discovered I had brought the truck to a stop at a brake and muffler shop! I was shocked. So I eased it a little bit further into the parking lot and went in and told them what happened. He wrote me up and posted a sign on the truck letting everybody know there was no brakes. I understood that the pushed the truck into the shop by hand.

I walked home and came back the next day to pick it up. I can honestly say that is the only time I ever had a vehicle break down right in front of the shop. Saved me the cost of a tow.