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posted by martyb on Saturday August 12 2017, @03:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the safety-is-no-accident dept.

In 2015, 4,700 people in the US lost a finger or other body part to table-saw incidents. Most of those injuries didn't have to happen, thanks to technology invented in 1999 by entrepreneur Stephen Gass. By giving his blade a slight electric charge, his saw is able to detect contact with a human hand and stop spinning in a few milliseconds. A widely circulated video[1] shows a test on a hot dog that leaves the wiener unscathed.

Now federal regulators are considering whether to make Gass' technology mandatory in the table-saw industry. The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced plans for a new rule in May, and the rules could take effect in the coming months.

But established makers of power tools vehemently object. They say the mandate could double the cost of entry-level table saws and destroy jobs in the power-tool industry. They also point out that Gass holds dozens of patents on the technology. If the CPSC makes the technology mandatory for table saws, that could give Gass a legal monopoly over the table-saw industry until at least 2021, when his oldest patents expire.

At the same time, table-saw related injuries cost society billions every year. The CPSC predicts switching to the safer saw design will save society $1,500 to $4,000 per saw sold by reducing medical bills and lost work.

"You commissioners have the power to take one of the most dangerous products ever available to consumers and make it vastly safer," Gass said at a CPSC public hearing on Wednesday.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/patent-disputes-stand-in-the-way-of-radically-safer-table-saws/

[1] SawStop Hot dog Video - Saw blade retracts within 5 milliseconds of accidental contact - YouTube.


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 12 2017, @07:52PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday August 12 2017, @07:52PM (#552937)

    Yeah, if you burn anything and inhale the vapors, plus the nasty combustion by-products, you're polluting your lungs and risking cancer. There are pot smokers who really like "vaporizers" which I guess separate the not-so-harmful vapors from the nastier particulate smoke. But one of the nice things about pot versus tobacco, in my observation as a total non-smoker of anything, is that pot smokers don't smoke *nearly* the volume of material that cigarette smokers do. The cigarette smokers are constantly lighting up, at least every couple hours, but the pot smokers might smoke once in the evening, or even once a week.

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