That is not a representative analogy. Imagine if in the 50s there was only one company that manufactured seatbelts and they owned every imaginable patent related to preventing car occupants from hitting surfaces in an accident (so another company couldn't for example invent the airbag because they'd block that too - see Bosch and a completely different implementation that Saw Stop sued out of the market).
Improved safety would be great, but legislation should never mandate a monopoly to a single manufacturer.
And imagine if this law passes and Saw Stop has monopoly on table saws. Sure, today you can buy one for $900 but nothing will prevent them from raising that to like $5000 when nobody else is allowed to build a table saw.
The patent system is not very compatible with highly regulated markets, it changes the game from choosing to buy something innovative to a non-voluntary overreach.
But it wasn't used to stop sawblades. How to reliably detect flesh without too many false triggers, do it fast enough, on a spinning blade, and as part of a complete system that includes the brake and actuation mechanism. That's what the patent is about, not the vague idea of using electricity to detect flesh.
It sounds incredibly naive to think this will happen. If they haven't done it so far why would they do it when the government mandates that you have to be their customer?
>However, one key patent — the "840" patent — is not set to expire until 2033. To stave off potential competitors, it describes the AIM technology very broadly. In a surprise move at February's CPSC hearing, TTS Tooltechnic Systems North America CEO Matt Howard announced that the company would "dedicate the 840 patent to the public" if a new safety standard were adopted. Howard says that this would free up rivals to pursue their own safety devices or simply copy SawStop's. At the hearing, he challenged them "to get in the game."
I don't think GP is objecting to the cost of a true-positive [in either the saw or seatbelt case] but rather to the cost of a false-positive.
How about air bags. Those are a better one.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/air-bags-may-harm-tall-small-people-...
https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-dedicate-key-u-s-pat...
A large part of the testimony was companies such as Grizzly complaining that SawStop is unwilling to engage with them in good faith on licensing their technology. Given SawStop's history, I'm unfortunately inclined to believe them.
Every step of the way Glass has not acted in good faith and instead acted like a patent attorney. We have little reason to believe that he has all of a sudden found goodwill toward man in his heart when there's a dollar somewhere he could instead put into his wallet.
>Gass: I was out in my shop one day, and I looked over at my table saw, and the idea kind of came to me. I wondered if one could stop the blade fast enough if you ran your hand into it to prevent serious injury.
>I started puttering around on how to stop things quickly. The simplest would have been a solenoid, but that would have been too slow and weak. I had come from RC airplanes—so I used the nose landing gear torsion spring from an RC airplane for an early experiment, that spring provided the force and I held it back with a fuse wire, a maybe 10 thou diameter fuse wire. I set up some capacitors to discharge through the wire and melt it in a few milliseconds, and I was able to generate maybe 20 lbs of force against a blade.
So this isn't one of those cases of a patent attorney taking over an existing invention/company.
>Gass: Now that SawStop is established, any royalties Grizzly might pay would be less than what SawStop could earn by selling the same number of saws itself, and therefore, as I have explained, a license at the present time is far more challenging because of the risk it creates to SawStop’s business. This, of course, changes should the CPSC implement a requirement for table saws to include active injury mitigation systems. Should that happen, we have said we would offer non-discriminatory licenses to all manufacturers.
> The fundamental question came down to economics. Almost a societal economic structure question. The CPSC says table saws result in about $4B in damage annually. The market for table saws is about $200-400M. This is a product that does almost 10x in damage as the market size. There's a disconnect—these costs are borne by individuals, the medical system, workers comp—and not paid by the power tools company. Because of that, there’s not that much incentive to improve the safety of these tools. Societally if there was an opportunity to spend $5 to save $10, we’d want to do that. But in this chain there's a break in people that can make those changes and people that are affected, so it’s not done.
This is a form of value-based pricing - figure out how much the customer values a thing and use that to persuade them to pay a higher price. Salespeople really like value-based pricing arguments.
Some safety measures are cheap, and suppliers can be bargained down. In the presence of robust competition, they could be bargained down to near the the cost of goods. But patents can result in a monopoly, along with monopoly pricing.
How much should you pay for tires? How about brakes? A vaccine?
In this case, I think he deserves to get rich from coming up with the idea, but there's still a lot of room for negotiation about how rich.
This means seizing the ruling class gets to seize anyone's inventions. Nobody writing these rules intends that. But while we can forgive the first dozen attempts out of naivety and, later, stupidity, I'm not sure how we similarly excuse modern performances.
Patents only exist as a concept, as a way to construct an equitable compensation for invention, to incentivize invention, that allows the market to determine what the total compensation over the legal lifetime of the patent should be, by licensing it or refusing to at given prices.
Insofar as an equitable compensation / patent “value” can be determined analytically on a one-off basis, you don’t need the patent system; the government can just buy out at that price, and the same goal will have been achieved.
Exactly. Ideally we wouldn't have patents, but would have a "Star Trek" luxury space communism economy. Until then, if an invention proves to be highly beneficial to society after a few years, I would entirely support governments buying out patents early. In the end, information is a public good (non-rival, non-excludable), so let's start treating it that way.
Eminent domain on real estate is only used as a last resort — it's invoked to buy out real estate where the government has some pre-existing plan that requires the use of the land; and there's no reasonable alternative to using that specific land; but the owner of the land doesn't want to sell it to them on the open market for a reasonable price (i.e. the price that they'd charge an arbitrary private buyer.)
I would assume eminent domain on patents would be the same: it would only be used if the government has a top-down plan that works out to require licensing a specific patent; with no reasonable alternative; but the patent owner is being obstructionist to licensing the patent for a reasonable price.
> it would only be used if the government has a top-down plan that works out to require licensing a specific patent; with no reasonable alternative; but the patent owner is being obstructionist to licensing the patent for a reasonable price.
Then I fully agree. In your previous comment where you said "you don’t need the patent system;" that threw me off thinking you were basically talking about every patent. Where you said "insofar" at the beginning of the sentence, I interpreted that to mean essentialy "since" or "because" but I see what your original intent was now, and I think we are in complete agreement.
I assume the “cost” were injuries added up through remaining lifespan through lost work, etc.
But you can’t do a cost-benefit analysis without counting benefits.
So let’s add up all the benefits and value created by table saws.
If they want to give the patents (note the plural there) for the benefit of mankind, they can do so. They are not doing so.
That's also not what the person you're responding to was arguing.
> SawStop was started by patent attorney Steve Gass
Otherwise, yeah i agree its annoying to pop the break on a wet piece of wood or a missed nail.
This looks quite destructive to the teeth that contact the stop:
https://youtu.be/Ibp2Gy2CFrY?si=Pa98Vey2oE0Atx1e&t=7
I can't imagine it will ever be cost-effective the labor of repairing a blade after that instead of just getting a new one.
This is really standard fare with professional carpentry. I don't understand why so many people here are in shock at the concept of blade servicing.
For me, I'm just surprised that the economics of it can work. I'd imagine such a specialist is not going to charge less than a $100/hr so I wouldn't have expected the cost of repair to make sense. But interesting that it does!
Definitely an old school style of business.
Just getting saw blade out of the stop is a major effort with a vice and engineers hammer. The way it brakes is an extremely violent process.
It definitely warps the blades in weird ways, and fixing them to actually be true is unlikely to be economic.
I don't know what to tell you. I ran a professional shop, I'm not a hobbyist. I couldn't tell you how many feet of lumber I've shoved through my table saw. I've never personally had the Sawstop pop due to a safety issue, but every single time it happened in the shop I was able to remove the blade and get it serviced for around $30-40 depending on how many teeth were lost. Most of my saw blades are greater then $100 new so this cost is worth it.
I guess we’re just living in different worlds.
So random folks, and random blades.
When you have blades high cost blades ($100+) its absolutely worth it to get them resharpened and teeth replaced.
Prior to owning the SawStop though I have had some close calls that would have been much less painful and dangerous had I been using a SawStop.
https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-t...
TTS is a magnitude bigger than SawStop and they might have different ideas than a narrow minded patent attorney.
TTS owns the shop but Gass clearly still has influence here.
He's got a PhD in Physics, and invented the core Stop Saw product after dabbling in woodworking as a hobby for many years.
Call him anything, but narrow minded isn't one of the descriptors that applies.
I'm curious about when that was filed and whether there's an Australian patent on "using electrical signals to detect close contact and then stop machine ripping through flesh" from ~1982 (ish) for a sheep shearing robot.
Tangential prior art exists (as is common with many patents) but it's always a long drawn out bunfight that largely only laywers win to engage in patent disputes.
They didn't offer the patent, the offered to offer. It's no different to when billionaires pledge to donate billions, yet year after year they're still on the Forbes top 100.
This is so naive to believe them.
It's a cost thing that the craptastic, corporate inversion power tool megacorps and Hazard Fraught's have resisted.
Btw, here's the video I got gargling for "!yt ave table saw", which compares a "Rigid" HF house brand saw to a SawStop saw:
PS: https://hfpricetracker.com which emphasizes the demand-side obsession of budget-priced gear. Perhaps a bigger issue is working people should be paid more (income equality) so they aren't pushed to buy or rent crappier, more dangerous tools.
Per the article, SawStop offered to 'open source' (as we'd say) the patent. Also, in TFA, end users objected to the regulation.
TLDR; They've offered not to defend their patent (or whatever the patent mumbo jumbo is) if the legislation goes through.
Stumpy Nubs on the subject: https://youtu.be/nxKkuDduYLk?si=c0GchB2hc3g0OtG4
The recent CPSC hearing where many of the revelations came out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyJGE2Vyid0&t=0s
That goodwill is not warranted, nothing about Glass' or SawStop's behavior suggests that they're doing anything other than trying to force people to license their product by way of regulation. If they want to claim they are giving the license away, then do the whole patent portfolio (required for a functioning system), not just one of them.
They've already sued their competitors to keep similar products off of the market and there is zero reason for us, the regulators, or the competition to trust this organization.
Gass also has a PhD in physics and was the person who designed and engineered the product.
>If they want to claim they are giving the license away, then do the whole patent portfolio (required for a functioning system), not just one of them.
They want to stay in business. If they give away all of the intellectual property of their entire system, it's likely that they wouldn't be able to for very long.
In a bath faith manner? What's bad faith about it? Enforcing a patent you own isn't bad faith. That's the point of a patent.
Maybe it's not, but it exhibits all the qualities, so...
You can't claim to desire safety for all while preventing anyone else from increasing safety.
The Bosch system was totally different, sounds superior on several fronts, and SS were only able to stop it by dint of technicalities and plain flaws in the US patent and legal system that allows frankly absurd arguments to win, and most pointedly, SS were willing to do exactly that. Not because Bosch stole anything from them, not because Bosch were sonehow harming users by doing the SS system but not as well as official SS, not because of any justifiable reason except that they physically could.
There is no way to justify SS actions.
"The reason why he shouldn't be trusted here is because he's done things in bad faith in the past"
"What has he done in bad faith in the past"
Your assertion "He's doing so in bad faith right there".
You can't also attempt to conclude your antecedent from your consequent.
So what? That doesn't make him NOT an attorney. There's nothing that says a PhD and product inventor can't ALSO be a engaged in a scheme to have their own patent encumbered invention mandated by law.
I won’t sit here and say I have the solution; but this status quo is undeniably bad. Unchecked capitalism like this makes want me to vomit. Think of how many people would be living a better life if every table saw had this technology mandated by law for the past decade. Really think about it.
Do we actually know this? Or could the license terms have just been too high?
“Hey if your product is so good that absolutely everyone needs to have it we’ll make sure you get no financial reward for developing it”
Regardless of your stance on whether the government should regulate x or y, it's important to understand that the people driving this law do not care about you or your fingers. This is rent seeking; someone who makes safe saws wants to sell more of their saws, and they compete with people who sell less safe saws. They are using the legal system to benefit their own bottom line.
After the real goal is established, reasons like "think of the children" or "think of the fingers" can be fabricated.
People and consumer advocates can feasibly have motives other than greed.
To that point, a regulation requiring "if and only if" per unit licensing is available at (much) less than the worth of the fingers should be a no brainier.
Should it be? Maybe, but that's a discussion out of scope from 'is it in society's interest to mandate inclusion of sawstop's technology, or it's equivalent?'.
edit: if you believe different, please share. But per this article, patents do not seem to be a reason to avoid this tech. And the SawStop v1 was introduced in 2004, so it stands to reason we can now produce patent-free equivalent tech to the 2004 machine.
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/stephen-f-gass
Notice that the vast majority of his patents have to do with various aspects of "active injury mitigation technology", primarily related to saws, and that the most recent one was filed in August 2021. The only patent being offered up is the original--- Patent 9,724,840--- which basically only releases a very specific, early implementation of the safety system that has since undergone 20 years of additional patent activity.
Sawstop, like a lot of other companies, abuse the patent process by filing multiple continuations with the exact same specification. They then let the patent office take its time granting some of them, and claim a 'patent term extension' due to the patent office delays.
So if they filed in 2001, but one of their patents wasn't granted for over 14 years due to the patent office taking 10 years in total to respond to the many arguments over patentability, it may expire in 2031. This seems absurd, but is totally legal. Being run by a patent attorney means they (a) are ninja level at drawing these arguments out and constantly filing appeals to continue examination after a denial by a patent examiner and (b) it doesn't cost them much to do so.
I'm simplifying and my numbers aren't exact, but this abuse is the problem.
Per wikipedia, it seems those continuation patents all expire in 2026 at the latest.
Is it unrealistic, or are the companies simply not pursuing that market because it would harm their existing lines of product?
>Unless every relevant patent is opened up, this is extreme regulatory capture and is going to be a price gouging patent licensing circus after it passes
Personally, I'm fine with that.
As per the article, an entry-level SawStop retails for $899.
There's not excuse why this kind of tech isn't in every saw. The low cost of existing saws is a negative externality whose cost (cut off fingers) is borne by the society (insurance companies, healthcare, and government).
I actually love sawstops. In fact I don't use table saws that don't include that functionality. But I would never, ever push for this kind of legislation. I'm not sure if you (or anyone commenting here) have ever used one of these saws personally, but the added expense and ongoing operating cost is not negligible. It's about $150 to fix it every time it triggers. People love to say 'cheaper than a trip to the hospital!' and while that's true it's also pithy and hand-wavy given how often these things trigger.
There are a ton of edge cases that can make these trigger (including mysterious triggers that seemingly have no cause), and there are whole classes of people who don't make enough to deal with that regularly but still operate saws safely for entire careers. Those are the people that are upset, not hypothetical hobbyists, who are the most likely to be able to afford the extra cost and be able to always operate in pristine conditions.
Powertools in a site setting need to operate in all kinds of conditions, and for a jobsite saw the money spent installing sensors and gadgets to meet regulations would be better spent on literally anything else for such a tool. People working in those settings are just going to turn this feature off and will strictly be hurt by this. (There's no way they can force these features to be always-on as that would prevent tons of materials from ever being able to be run through a table saw again.) To make it literally illegal to produce the right tool for site workers is an overreach coming from out of touch people.
Woodworking is an interesting space where people generally accept the risks they take and in return are more or less trusted to make that assessment by regulatory bodies at least in the US. A better comparison than seatbelts would be the european regulations around dado blades, which as I understand are fairly unpopular. Sawstops are great for HN types. That doesn't mean it should be illegal to produce sensorless saws.
My suspicion is that the better analogy for these things is airbags rather than seatbelts. Because people don't use seatbelts (guards), install something expensive that can't be easily defeated, airbags (sawstops), which are touchy and known to brick the car (saw). Do sawstops, when not engaging, inhibit the function of the saw as badly as airbags inhibit visibility around A pillars?
Do you live in a humid environment?
If it is being left up to the manufacturer, then half the arguments being mentioned here are moot. Other manufacturers are free to get creative about it. I can think of a few different ways myself - even something like assisted manoeuvring of the wood piece without direct contact of the hand, a retractable shield, etc.
Also, some tools are a whole lot safer than others. Tools that carry a risk of flinging your project (such as table saws and lathes) are risky, but a lot of other tools (such as jig saws and tracks saws) are very unlikely to cause serious injury.
And, of course, you can do without power tools altogether. People have used hand tools exclusively for the vast majority of the history of woodworking, and many people today still primarily use hand tools because they are more precise, safer, and often easier to use (albeit slower).
It isn't going to cost 10x.
Personally I've had a very poor experience using a sawstop, as well as witnessing it cause younger guys to get overly confident
What really scares me are band saws!
A good video with examples (of pictures of recommended cuts, not injuries) is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Zeg8fHVrJBk
A good example is at 1:20 of the video.
If I had a small hobbyist shop I think I would spend extra to get a big bandsaw and make do with a circular saw and a nice track. A circular saw and a router (for dados) can substitute for a table saw. You can't resaw without a bandsaw.
I've been wondering about this kind of thing recently.
I think people struggle all their lives with independence, and it is wonderful when you get the feeling of being "sovereign". Being your own man (or woman), confident in who you are and what you can do.
And then we run into forces bigger than us, and some people continue to defend their sovereignty. They want their freedom and they don't want to be told what to do.
(For me, I hate things like companies that want to LOG IN to my bank account to verify my income/etc and will never give up that fight.
for someone else it might be seatbelts.
I wasn't really aware of the seatbelt fight, but I remember helmet laws. My position was that I would wear a helmet, but I wouldn't want to force someone else to wear one.
... on the other hand, I think it is ok to make kids wear helmets.
"If it's mandated, you're going to have people hanging on to their old saws forever," Juntunen says. "And, you know, that's when I'd say there will be more injuries on an old saw."
Does the mandate in any way change the functionality of a new saw (other than for cutting flesh)?
Right. I hate the damn things and they've always scared the shit out of me whenever I use them. I've not been seriously injured yet but I've come damn close.
Fortunately, I don't have one at present as someone stole my one during a factory move. I view this as good fortune for eventually I'll have to replace it and I'll do so with one with SawStop-like safety features.
I cannot understand what all the fuss and objections are about, yes SawStop-type saws are more expensive but their cost simply pales into insignificace the moment one's fingers go walkabout.
People are mad to say one can always use table saws safely. That may be the case for 99.99% of the time but it's the unexpected rare event that bites even the most seasoned professionals.
Table saws and their related brethren table routers are by design intrinsically unsafe, and this ought to be damn obvious to both Blind Freddy and the Village Idiot.
Frankly there's something perverse about those who consider table saws safe to use, alternatively they've misguided bravado and or they lack common sense.
Redesigning them to be intrinsically save just makes common sense, and in the long run will cost society much less (as amputations are enormously expensive per capita and it all adds up).
Edit: to those down-voters, I've a longtime friend who is one of the most meticulous and careful workers that I know (much more so than I am). Moreover, that planned thinking extends to the work he turns out, it's nothing but the finest quality.
He's been around power tools all his life and I first observed him using table saws and routers over 40 years ago. That said, about four years ago he was seriously injured when using a table router. Injuries to his hand were so severe that he has lost almost all of the dexterity in his hand, even now after many operations and ongoing professional physiotherapy, he has only regained partial use of his hand.
Perhaps the skeptics need to meet people like him and just see the negative impact such injuries have had on their lives.
"It's never hurt me"
"I accept the risk"
"It will double the price of a saw"
"I won't see any of these 'society savings', only the sawmakers will see more money"
Yeah, maybe a public ad campaign would help.
That list might seem like a lot of twaddle, but I'll illustrate with a few examples. Case (e) may involve an industrial chemist who is put in the unusual situation of having to deal with a dangerous, toxic and explosive chemical that's not normally found in common use—for example, pentaborane which comes to mind because it's a HN news item today. He knows what it is and its dangers but he hasn't dealt with it before so he goes to inordinate lengths to handle it safely. On the other hand, case (f) is a Similarly trained chemist with special training in the handling of pentaborane and he applies a regulated set of procedures to handle the substance.
Table saws are both intrinsically unsafe and have high impact when things go wrong which is borne out by statistics no matter the jurisdiction, country etc. Unfortunately, like motor bikes, they've been historically grandfathered into common use from an era when safety was hardly considered important.
Had motorbikes been suddenly invented today they wouldn't be allowed on public roadways. Same goes for table saws, they can be bought freely and anyone can use them without any training whatsoever. If invented today one would have to be trained and or licensed to use them.
We've seen how regulations change over time and how they are becoming tighter every day just about everywhere. When I was a kid, where I live anyone could buy fireworks including yours truly at the age of six. Now fireworks have been banned altogether here, not even adults such as I am who've (a) been trained in chemistry and (b) had military training and who was trained in handling things much more dangerous than fireworks for domestic consumption can do so either. I find this both irritating and irksome and an over intrusion of the nanny state into my affairs.
I'd suggest that those who voted down my original post also felt this way when they read my post, and I don't blame them one bit. The trouble is multifold, the State regulates, say fireworks after irresponsible use and after kids have become blinded. Regulations are introduced more from emotional reasons than based on actual harm to large numbers of people. The law now makes no exception for experience, nor does it allow exceptions for those with demonstrable experience (the only exception here is those with special training for public displays such as for new year's eve).
We've seen this progressive tightening of regulations in just about every country on the planet and in every field of endeavor—from drug regulations, to vehicle licenses, to firearm licenses and regulations, to restrictions on purchasing what the State perceives to be dangerous chemicals (when I was a kid local pharmacists sold thallium and strychnine for rat poison to anyone but they've long since been banned (I'd doubt if these highly toxic chemicals can still be purchased anywhere in the Western world).
The trouble is that laws and regulations are horribly uneven and often they extend into overregulation.
Now look at the facts: both thallium and strychnine were banned in many places decades ago because of a small number of accidental poisonings and an even much smaller number of deliberate ones. On the other hand, table saws—according to statistics—have maimed and ruined the lives of orders of magnitude more people than those poisons have ever done but it's only now that we are just trying to make them safer.
Unlike motor vehicles and forklifts, there's still no talk of training people before they can use table saws—nor is there any talk of requiring users to be licensed to use them.
When looked at objectively and in comparison with similar regulations elsewhere, this tightening of regulations in respect of table saws really isn't that unreasonable, and by other comparable standards it's long overdue.
Usually I don't bother to note votes until logging in agsin which can be days later but the subject seemed somewhat controversial so I watched them (it's a shame HN only provides a summary, so if say I see two points then I've no idea if only one person voted or if it were twenty).
I thought what I said was pretty mild so I'm a bit surprised at the reaction. It's a shame most down-voters don't bother to say what they consider is wrong with one's arguments.
PS: while I definitely don't take pride in being an HN pinata, it's simply too easy to become one with any deviation from the new collective. Not pride - merely graceless resignation
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
Every single legal requirement is one more tool for corrupt scum to use against me. I oppose evry law except those that enforce the Bill of Rights.
I want my pothead neighbor to have a nuclear weapon. It's better than cops running speed traps.
Those who have been crushed by tyranny know what I mean.
> So many people are certain it won't happen to them.
You seem convinced that tyranny will not happen to you. I can not comment further.
I am against government mandates in regards to seatbelts.
>Ever think of how many more people would be willing to buy a table saw if they knew they weren't going to cut their fingers off? If you think this is a factor in people buying or not buying a table saw, I have a bridge to sell you.
Not wearing a seatbelt costs society time and money.
The cost to society is voluntary and self imposed.
I can't unilaterally decide to pay for you and then use that to impose whatever rules I want on you.
We allow all sorts of dangerous activities with the same problems. If we're worried about the rescue and medical costs, we should definitely ban skiing, skydiving, climbing, etc.
I wear seatbelts; I could understand insurance contracts not covering costs if the insured didn't wear a seatbelt; but I don't think government should mandate it. I'm not anti-regulation; I agree with the table saw safety requirement.
A British road safety advert:
Also public services are inherently shared services. The delay time and tax payer expense to individuals to have public employees to remove the dead bodies and broken windshields of folks who didn't wear seatbelts on the freeway is an imposition on the shared enjoyment of the freeway and on tax payer income.
Likewise even assuming every injury were treatable, every person getting their thumb reattached or whatever because of a preventable injury means a doctor's time isn't available to treat other injuries that couldn't be prevented. uninsured individuals with these injuries also increase the cost of insurance (one of multiple reasons why our medical costs in the US are higher per capita). Nor is every injury treatable to that extent.
Bet setting that aside, if you really want the freedom to cut off your own fingers accidentally, I bet all the dangerous tablesaws that currently exist will become available at garage sales or whatever very cheaply, so the frugal consumer still wins.
Arguably gives a whole new meaning to five finger discount.
Similarly, you aren’t the only one that gets to use your car. Assuming you have friends, they might like a lift from you and not risk their lives doing so because you choose FREEDOM! over seat belts. Or the friends of your kid that you drive to soccer practice. Their mums and dads would like the freedom to have their kids reach adulthood.
We live in a society. We’re not Doctor Manhattan floating above the surface of Mars in perfect solipsistic isolation. It’s not about the government. It’s about your friends, family, neighbours, and community… all of whom are represented by the government.
You won't blame me. You'll blame yourself.
Got it.
That’s a legitimate question. Does it need malicious intent otherwise it’s up to everyone to protect themselves from others and no one has a responsibility to mitigate harm?
Which is why seatbelt mandates make sense, they reduce the cost for everyone.
I think we mandated seatbelts because they prevent tragic deaths and cost almost nothing to manufacture. Sometimes we actually do impose on people’s liberty in the interest of preventing them from doing something stupid, and there’s no reason to pretend otherwise.
I mean, if we did look up the data and found that they actually do end up costing more, would you be in favor of banning seatbelts? I certainly wouldn’t!
Double check it, I haven’t claimed to have any evidence, and I’m saying that the life-saving aspect is sufficient to mandate seatbelts.
I was using bubble wrap as a joke thing more than an actual suggestion. My point is, just because something would lower the number of costs to society doesn't mean we should start mandating it.
An example of something that for sure saves lives and lowers public costs is mandating adults wear helms on bicycles.
That's potentially a bad example. The largest cause of mortality (or lost quality-adjusted life years - QALY) is from cardiovascular events, and those events are inversely correlated to physical activity levels. Cycling is physical activity, and helmet laws, where passed, have typically coincided with a marked decrease in cycling.
Under some reasonable assumptions, helmet laws cause less cycling, which causes less physical activity in the population, which causes more cardiovascular events, and the overall negative QALY impact outweighs the relatively small positive impact from fewer head injuries (especially compared to government pro-helmet safety messaging that has been optimised to minimise cycling deterrence while increasing helmet uptake as an alternative policy).
If we apply the logic above, those costs provide justification for mandating and criminalizing diet and exercise.
If you don't think the logic holds true, that means you think there are other relevant factors besides cost. What are they and why don't they apply to saws?
I think the huristic most people use for most laws is if it impacts them or not. People object to diet police because impacts them. They are fine with saw police, because it impacts someone else. Saw users already have a choice, and can freely buy safety saws if the want.
In short, people like telling others what to do, but not being told what to do.
For sure huh :)
See my older post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39658466
TL;DR:
"Cycling UK wants to keep helmets an optional choice. Forcing - or strongly encouraging - people to wear helmets deters people from cycling and undermines the public health benefits of cycling. This campaign seeks to educate policy makers and block misguided attempts at legislation."
&
"Enforced helmet laws and helmet promotion have consistently caused substantial reductions in cycle use (30-40% in Perth, Western Australia).
The resulting loss of cycling’s health benefits alone (that is, before taking account of its environmental, economic and societal benefits) is very much greater than any possible injury prevention benefit."
&
"Cycling levels in the Netherlands have substantial population-level health benefits: about 6500 deaths are prevented annually, and Dutch people have half-a-year-longer life expectancy. These large population-level health benefits translate into economic benefits of €19 billion per year, which represents more than 3% of the Dutch gross domestic product between 2010 and 2013.3."
If you look at the number of auto deaths 100 years ago it is lower than today. You can't use that ad proof that seatbelts cause deaths. Instead you have to look at other factors like the amount of drivers. With my helmet example you would look at lives saved from wearing the helmet.
Secondly, I've seen some studies (I think it was in the UK, but didn't feel like trying to find it) that showed people dying younger is actually more cost effective since older people have larger medical expenses.
How about sticking to arguing against the actual thing you have an issue with, on its actual merits and drawbacks. I understand that it’s less attractive because it requires actual research and knowledge instead of just throwing “BUBBLE WRAP EVERYTHING!!!” comments over the fence, but HN deserves better than this drivel.
If I could start a league tomorrow where shin-guards were optional, would the police come knocking or not?
If not, there's no law. There's private rules.
The whole question under debate is whether actual laws are necessary for this situation. I fail to see how appealing to voluntary association rules have any bearing on the question.
So the practical effect is identical to seatbelts; you can absolutely operate without seatbelts/shin guards, but only in completely private facilities.
This does nothing to alleviate those pressures and the number of organs that are useful for transplant after a violent crash (that kills the occupant!) is basically zero.
I remember a time before seatbelts were compulsory and very few people wore them.
> I am against government mandates in regards to seatbelts.
* To the point that I added them to a car of mine that didn’t originally come equipped with them. I like them and wear them regularly by choice, as should be the case.
This kind of mentality is not rational.
No one cares, you don't have a good enough reason. It's ok to have some kinds of mandates. I don't want my tax dollars going to pay EMS and police to shovel your remains off the highway because you wanted to drive like an idiot.
The original fear of mandating seatbelts was it becoming a slippery slope, and the government continuing to mandate other aspects of citizens lives.
A similar fear happened when drunk driving was outlawed, but obviously its implications in harming others was a good justification for it.
With seatbelts, it’s less harm on others if I don’t wear it, more so a strain on society as a whole (first responders, more serious medical attention)
In general though I agree that governments shouldn’t be mandating what individuals can do to themselves. The argument lies in how much those actions effect others in a tertiary sense (doing drugs only effects me, but if I go into a coma that’s a strain on society and a blurry line. If become violent because of those drugs, it’s more concrete)
Meanwhile alcohol is legal, and is involved in more murders and domestic violence than any other substance.
Federalism would probably work fine for the country in general. Lots of human suffering would occur in states that elect dumbasses, but the high-productivity parts of the country would continue along just fine, and probably actually benefit without the need to keep sending money.
In some case, voters might change their tune as they actually have to face the consequences of electing unhinged ideologues.
But, it would also involve lots of pain and suffering falling on vulnerable people, so it isn’t worth it.
The US learned between 1776 and 1789, under the Articles of Confederation. That's why they made a new constitution with a stronger centeral government.
If you take out the pain and suffering values from these costs, you actually find that the cost benefit analysis doesn't pass at all, coming in at 0.5bn to 3.4bn in the red depending on the cost of the regulation on consumers, per the agency's own analysis.
If you got and read what people think about these regulations about people who use the tools, e.g. on /r/tools, they are unanimously opposed to them. Many people have complaints about the proposed products not working as advertised and generally wanting to bypass the system entirely: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/19fmzko/are_you_in_f...
And that gets to the other part of this issue, if the regulation passes, what is the actual behavior change that will happen? Will people buy these saws and use them in the intended manner, or will they switch to alternatives that are just as dangerous, or will they simply turn off the safety features because the false positives are expensive ($100+ in direct costs without counting productivity losses). And note: all the SawStop products have off switches for the safety because they have false positives on wet wood and conductive materials like aluminum.
The headlines for these regulations are always great since nobody likes losing fingers, but there are always trade-offs, and it is extremely easy to make mistakes in these calculations and not foresee the actual knock on effects of them.
Particularly in this case where costs are largely internalized, rather than externalized.
It's really simple to use a table saw safely: don't ever get physically close enough (by far!) for the spinning blade to cut you, or stand where it can fling something at you.
Then even if there's no riving knife and blade guard it's not going to ruin your day.
This means that you'll sometimes need to build a small jig to push wood into the saw, but usually you can just use a long stick to push the wood into it.
Every single table saw accident video you'll see is people who've clearly become way too complacent with them, or are trying to save themselves a few minutes of setup time.
I do all of the things you mentioned, plus I use pushers or a crosscut sled whenever possible. It should be impossible for me to make contact, but it only takes a split second of stupidity or inattention to mess up
In theory.
As someone who has used a table saw, you simply cannot account for every variable factored in to having a 10" piece of sharpened carbide steel spinning at 5,000 RPMs and shoving a piece of probably inconsistently structured building materials through it, many, many, many times to accomplish a job. Maybe the sawmill left a nail in there for you: shit happens.
In the immortal words of Jean Luc Picard: It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That's why we build things with safety features: to manage those risks.
I think seatbelts should be mandatory, but don't think it's sensible to mandate complex and expensive technical solutions for table saws, when safe work practices can also mitigate them entirely.
But in my own car, I have no problem telling people to buckle up or GTFO (or not, by my own choice). If I allow them to ride unbuckled, I’m voluntarily taking the risk one will try to go through the windshield via my noggin.
When ideals and reality go against each other, reality has a nasty habit of winning. And honestly, if seatbelts and table saws that don't cut your fingers off are such an authoritarian affront to one's freedom and personal responsibility, then so be it.
Civil disobedience is always an option to those who absolutely hate this idea, but then they should take their "personal responsibility" and "bodily autonomy" and not be shocked if they have to face the consequences.
Because we know the mechanism behind the thing, and it's essentially unavoidable to trip because the lumber industry continues to sell still-wet wood. Until you put that industry firmly in its place, people are just going to be losing tons of money on 'safer' saws via constantly having to replace blades as the stop mechanism breaks them. And then we break out the handheld circular saw without that bullshit and go back to work.
They are able, and they’re choosing not to. So SawStop is wisely spending marketing money on lobbying. If people don’t want to buy your product, nothing better than forcing them to.
Please don't mix up "being against something" and "being against legislation that forces people into something". You can support the thing, do the thing yourself, advice all of your friends and family to do the thing, and still believe that people should have the freedom not to do the thing, even if you think this decision would be extremely stupid.
Woodworker here. The equivalent SawStop to my basic table saw is 3X the price.
Your analogy wouldn’t make sense unless seatbelts tripled the price of cars.
SawStop has a huge patent portfolio and they’ve been cagey about actually letting other people use the full system. This is more of a regulatory capture play, not a safety play with consumers in mind.
Those of us who ride motorcycles?
I am constantly amazed at the number of foreigners from first world countries who don't wear seatbelts or helmets the moment there is no Big Brother forcing them to.
Road fatality rates are 10x what they are in Germany, Japan, Ireland. 9x what they are in Australia. Until this year drunk driving laws were unenforced and drunk driving was widespread.
I grew up as a proud resident of New Hampshire which has no such law on the books despite being one of the safest states to drive in the USA.
Motorcycles are legal so why shouldn’t driving alone without a seatbelt? Perfect example of government overreach as cars get loaded with nanny state technology. I subscribe to the philosophy of personal responsibility, something that seems to have been lost in the modern litigious, it’s everyone-else’s-fault culture of the 21st century.
I've never used a table saw but I rock climb regularly which has plenty of risk. Are table saw accidents purely due to your own actions? Or is it like a motorbike where there are factors out of your control and someone could crash into you.
If losing your fingers on a table saw is 100% due to your own actions and there are no externalities, I would call that negligence not accident.
Sure! I'm withyou!
People who buy table saws with a failsafe mechanism should not be fined for not using the failsafe or disabling it.
...selling the table saw without that mechanism should be, however, banned - just like cars without seatbelts or airbags aren't legal to sell in New Hampshire (or any other US state).
We're too closely connected in modern society to just let people exclusively decide what risks they want to take, because their risks are also our risks. I wish our collective wellbeing wasn't tied to the guy who wants to drive without a seatbelt, but that's the world right now.
Last time I checked, you couldn't legally sell a car in New Hampshire which did not have seatbelts.
You're comparing apples to cardboard boxes here.
>Motorcycles are legal so why shouldn’t driving alone without a seatbelt?
Irrelevant. The question you need to ask for a fair comparison is:
>Motorcycles are legal so why shouldn’t SELLING A CAR without a seatbelt?
The answer is: because these are different vehicles with different use cases (and adoption levels) that require different kinds of licenses to operate and have different kind of negative externalities.
Same reason motorcycles aren't required to have airbags.
No chance your father or your joiner friend hadn't seen those ads of the saws which automatically stop on contact. But they chose not to buy one, because they decided they didn't need one. They had that choice. Or if before those existed, to use a hand saw.
Regulation is nothing more than saying "we're superior to you in making choices for you, so we'll do so". And it's made not by efficient innovative geniuses, but by the same people who run the DMV. And it's not imposed on children by parents, it's on grown adults by other grown adults with no legal accountability. And it ossifies technology by locking in certain measures which will quickly drift out of date. And, as we've seen with the FDA and Opioids, it gives a get out of jail free card to wrongdoers who game the rules, because they can point to their compliance and say "so look, we followed the rules, we shouldn't be liable".
It's just unbelievable people think regulation is in any way a good thing.
> It's just unbelievable people think regulation is in any way a good thing.
In general, there are many cases that most people cannot really take responsibility for. For example, if you hit a person with a car that can mean they’ll lose their income and need specialized care for decades. Such costs can run in the millions.
Now, you can argue people should take insurance against that risk. Problem is: some people won’t, and victims won’t be compensated,. If, then, you think the state should take on those costs, doesn’t the state have a say in what kinds of cars you can drive, for example that they have various safety features?
Also, this doesn’t only apply to cases where you injury others. If people get into an accident that leaves them with health costs they can’t afford to pay, we expect society to, at least partly pay up.
I think that argument applies here, too. Saw accidents can and do make lots of persons lose health and future income. In many cases, it’s the state that will have to pay up to cover that.
I wish people would stop digging on the DMV. I have had multiple positive experiences with the DMV
I dunno man, I kinda like when there’s some sort of enforcement making sure there’s not toxic waste in my food beyond hoping I find out later and a remedy even exists to make me whole. But you do you, anarchy’s worked every other time it’s been tried right?
The patent situation and much higher price are unfortunate, but it’s still a cost I am willing to bear. It’s cheap insurance compared to an ER visit and extended amounts of time spent feeling pain.
Here in Seattle, there used to be a bicycle helmet law. Helmets reduce the severity of injury in a crash, less severe injuries are obviously better, forcing people to run less risk is therefore justifiable: it seemed to make sense, and it was a popular law.
And yet, it was repealed. Why? Disproportional enforcement, partially - tickets were inevitably handed out primarily to poorer and more marginalized people - but the law actually made things worse for everyone by reducing the total number of riders on the road. There is safety in numbers for bicyclists, who are less likely to be hit by motorists when they are a more common sight - but the health benefit expected from riding a bicycle at all, helmet or no, is actually greater than the health benefit expected by adding a helmet. It is therefore better, both collectively and individually, if we remove every possible barrier to bicycle riding, even though some people will choose not to ride as safely as we wish they might.
Unintended consequences are a real thing, so a person can quite reasonably believe that the SawStop is a great invention which everyone should use, and that a law mandating the use of SawStop would be a bad idea.
There is literally nothing stopping those people from buying the saw that prevents that right now.
Where have you been for the past 4 years?
When SawStop created a meat-detecting brake for table saws, they patented their invention. And then, they refused to give it away, sued the begeezus out of anyone who tried to emulate their patented inventions, and eventually paid lip-service to the concept by offering to license one aspect of it for free.
Can you spot the difference?
My dad had a table saw he'd been using for over a decade when he had an accident. Luckily they were able to stitch up the finger and he missed the bone, allowing the finger tip to regrow. But my family friend who's a professional carpenter isn't as lucky and is missing the tips of three fingers from a jointer.
These tools are dangerous and table saws cause upwards of 30k injures a year. Everyone's talking about how this will kill the industry. Are businesses not innovative around costs, new technology, and regulations? Seems like everything from cars to energy have all improved with regulatory pressure
And to all the people saying this will keep hobbyists away. Ever think of how many more people would be willing to buy a table saw if they knew they weren't going to cut their fingers off?