SawStop?

Is safety legislation in fact the result of lobbying by the labor unions? Usually they handle things by contract.

Reply to
J. Clarke
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Absolutely wrong. Airbags are a _supplimental_ restraint. They are only effective if you're in the position you're expected to be in, and if you're not wearing seatbelts, you won't be. You'll either be too close and get a very in-your-face airbag experience, or you'll be half-way out the window when you roll the car or whatever. The airbag is to cushion the impact for a passenger who is in the expected location, and if you're elsewhere, it won't work well for you. It has never been advertised as a replacement for seatbelts, nor is it effective as such.

The thing is, if it can stop a blade that fast, that's an _awful_ lot of energy getting dissipated into something, very fast. Heat will build up somewhere, and sharpened steel things sometimes don't like heat. I'm not sure if that's avoidable.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

Do you really think that SawStop's patent lawyers didn't think of that?

There could be at least 3 reasons for that. Think hard.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

Lots of industrial processes involve wastewater going into the local river or creek. If not there, into the municipal wastewater system which eventually goes to...anyone? Anyone?

I suspect that neither you I know enough actual facts on said situation to make an informed judgement.

And yet, without knowing that a byproduct of whatever process will, _in the future_ be found to be a hazard, it's impossible to consider use of said chemical to be a disregard for public good. If we discover tomorrow that Peanut Butter causes, oh, I dunno, wombat cancer, are you going to say that Jif, in the 1970s, wasn't concerned about public safety?

GE: "Hey, any problem with this?" EPA: "Nope, not that we know of." GE: "Okey-dokey then." (years pass) EPA "Um, hey, how's it going. About that process...we need to talk..."

Reply to
Dave Hinz

They had no inkling they were doing any harm. And again, please note, GE was not 'dumping' PCBs in the conventional sense. The problem stemmed from contaminated wash water, not dumping the stuff directly in the river.

In the quantities they were putting into the water, definitely yes. Remember for most of that time the only known health risk from PCBs was chloracne in workers who were exposed to large amounts of the chemical.

GE was simply letting waste water from floor washing (and occasionally from washing out capacitors damaged in floods ) flow down the drain. There was no reason to think this was a problem for anyone.

It wasn't until the end of this period that the possibility of other dangers was raised and it's worthwhile to note that it's hard to get agreement on just what the dangers of PCBs in the environment actually are. Originally it was thought to be a serious carcinogen, but more recent work (including studies not financed by GE -- a fact some people like to leave out) have found this apparently isn't so. Now the danger is claimed to be an estrogen-like effect that messes up growth and reproduction. The jury's still out on that one, much less the doses that cause the problem.

(Note that the standards for PCB exposure were set under the impression that it was both a powerful carcinogen and was causing eggshell thinning in birds -- neither of which is now thought to be true. They bear little or no relationship to the currently perceived 'problem' with the stuff.)

The other thing to keep in mind is that for most of the period we couldn't even measure the bio-accumulation of PCBs. It wasn't until the 1960s that we even had instruments sensitive enough to measure that.

The big problem with PCBs, and the reason everyone agrees it's a good idea to control them, is that they do bio-accumulate, especially in species toward the top of the food chain. But again, this wasn't discovered until the end of the period in question.

Only if you assume the people at GE were able to see the future and detect possible problems decades before they were discovered by scientists.

--RC

Projects expand to fill the clamps available -- plus 20 percent

Reply to
rcook5

Okay, I overstated my case. The 'whole' rationale for air bags was not that they would protect people not wearing seat belts. However it was a major rationale for air bags in the debate about them. And, rather surprisingly, it is still commonly used.

(And, BTW, since 1997 you are not allowed to use alternative passive restraint devices.)

All absolutely true.

Uh, wrong. That was one of the major rationales for requiring air bags, at least in the public discussion of the time. Now if you read carefully you could find people who put the argument correctly, but the overall tone of the pro-airbag people was that airbags would handle the problem of people who wouldn't fasten their seatbelts.

In fact this is still used as an argument for air bags by NHTSA, at least by implication. Take a look at:

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the stuff at the bottom. If you don't read carefully you come away from this page with the notion that air bags are more effective than seatbelts. Nowhere on this page of stuff does the NHTSA actually come out and say that air bags are designed to be used in conjunction with seat belts.

Now look at the this from one of the 'public interest' groups that pushed so hard and spread so much misinformation in an effort to get air bags mandated.

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especially the claim: Protection of Unbelted Occupants Original purpose of air bags

Progressive Insurance is much more honest in its page on seat belts and air bags.

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of course an auto insurance company has a major interest in preventing injuries and deaths in auto accidents. Unlike a government agency whose main interest is likely to be in defending a bureaucratic decision.

Again, quite correct. In fact there have been several studies showing that air bags are much less effective than seat belts in saving lives. See for example, this one by the Canadian equivalent of DOT:

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Now, ask 100 people on the street if they think air bags are safer than seat belts. The misinformation persists.

Seat belts would have come into use without government regulation. Air bags are a much less likely proposition because they are so much less effective.

In fact even if you completely buy the arguments for air bags it is now obvious that they were rushed into production by government mandate far too soon and quite a number of people have died or been injured because of that. (Including my mother in law, who had the skin ripped off her face by an air bag -- and yes, she was wearing a seat belt.) The main problem was that the government rules set the deployment forces too low.

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The energy involved is indeed a consideration. But there should be ways to handle that that are less destructive than SawStop's approach. But if SawStop had been mandated into law, we probably never would have found out.

--RC Projects expand to fill the clamps available -- plus 20 percent

Reply to
rcook5

That's very true. Since none of the saw manufacturers have said that they would like to license it, but that the cost was prohibitive, it doesn't really seem likely that that is the reason. But it could be.

Reply to
Hank Gillette

Sawstop should not be mandated, but the argument that "there are undoubtedly better ways to do the same thing" is irrelevant, since millions of table saws have been built, all without undoubtedly better ways to do the same thing.

Reply to
GregP

The "whole" rationale for refusing auto makers to back off on the firing force of the air bags was to protect people not wearing seat belts and several gov't people refused to back off on that in spite of the fact that children were being killed by it.

Reply to
GregP

US corporations get credited for things that were rammed down their throats, including seat belts, passenger compartment protections, and disc brakes. Claiming that seat belts would have become standard issue in a few years without gov't intervention is good old Soviet-style revisionist history.

Reply to
GregP

Huh? Who "rammed disk brakes down their throat"? There is no government regulation requiring disk brakes, at least not in the US.

Really depends on whether people wanted them or not. If people bought cars with them in preference to cars without them then they would have eventually become standard across the board. If people went the other way then they would not. What is your objection to letting people decide how much safety they want in their lives?

Reply to
J. Clarke

Has anyone read how this technology works? In a nutshell, it detects the electrical signal of your finger using the blade as a conductor. I wonder if this means that HSS is in, and carbide is out since the adhesive and the carbide may insulate the signal.

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Reply to
Todd the wood junkie

conducted electricity. I believe tungsten carbide does as well. But it won't work for blades with big diamond teeth.

-j

Reply to
J

I've also not heard of disk brakes being mandatory. There are handling and engineering reasons to prefer them; less unsprung weight and rotating mass, easier servicing, and probably lower cost as well. Common in the

1960s at least on some makes.
Reply to
Dave Hinz

Brass and tungsten carbide conduct well, I think. Unless your TS blade has the teeth epoxied in or something?

Reply to
Dave Hinz

work with a carbide blade then it's worthless.

Reply to
J. Clarke

None. I object to people pretending that US auto manufacturers would have made them standard in automobiles any time soon.

Reply to
GregP

I apologize, I mixed that up with something else.

I do think that parents should be required to seatbelt their children.

Reply to
GregP

When you start requiring school bus drivers to do this (and don't give me that crap about how the buses are designed to not hurt the kids when they run into a bridge abutment), then perhaps you'll find people other than professional busybodies agreeing that parents should be required to do it. Of course the professional busybodies have an effective lobby and so parents are already required by law to do this and a good deal more, some of which is intended to protect the kids in their government-approved child safety seats from the government-required airbags which, when they strike a child in such a seat, with deplorable regularity kill him.

Reply to
J. Clarke

It's speculative, of course, since it didn't happen. But it's hardly revisionist history. The fact is that seat belts were becoming increasingly common, both as aftermarket items and as options on some cars. If you follow the trend it's easy to see that seatbelts were on the verge of being widely adopted.

Nor is it true that seat belts were generally regarded as wimpy. To my knowledge one of the first groups to adopt them were pilots. In fact I knew several who had installed aircraft harnesses in their cars.

The objections to seat belts were already being addressed by insurance companies and others concerned with traffic safety who were conducting public information campaigns.

As for disc brakes -- they were common on automobiles long before government regulation. They were more common in European vehicles, but they were spreading fairly quickly to US automobiles because they were seen as a 'sporty' prestige item.

--RC

Projects expand to fill the clamps available -- plus 20 percent

Reply to
rcook5

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