Table saw safety legislation

[Packard]

This may be old news, but I just read it today. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is trying to make Saw Stop technology optional only. They are opposing making it mandatory. I am still processing this information in my mind and I am undecided.

Here is the article I read. The claim is that the legislation would double the cost of the table saws and enrich one manufacturer. But, if I recall correctly, Saw Stop never wanted to produce table saws at all. They wanted to license the tech, but there were no takers. I think I would be OK with this legislation, if Saw Stop got out of the saw business and went back to the licensed-only business model.

FTC Says a Table Saw Safety Rule Must Be Scrapped. Here's Why

The regulator says a safety rule meant to prevent tens of thousands of finger amputations a year would hand one company too much power.

www.inc.com

 

[smorgasbord]

Covered in this earlier thread:

S

Thread 'SawStop/ Active Injury Mitigation technology to NOT be required'

Aug 25, 2025

CPSC reverses course.
EDIT: I guess the guy wants you to go to YouTube and watch it there.

• smorgasbord
• Replies: 10
• Forum: General Friendly Chat

 

[onocoffee]

This may be old news, but I just read it today. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is trying to make Saw Stop technology optional only. They are opposing making it mandatory. I am still processing this information in my mind and I am undecided.

Here is the article I read. The claim is that the legislation would double the cost of the table saws and enrich one manufacturer. But, if I recall correctly, Saw Stop never wanted to produce table saws at all. They wanted to license the tech, but there were no takers. I think I would be OK with this legislation, if Saw Stop got out of the saw business and went back to the licensed-only business model.

FTC Says a Table Saw Safety Rule Must Be Scrapped. Here's Why

The regulator says a safety rule meant to prevent tens of thousands of finger amputations a year would hand one company too much power.

www.inc.com

Maybe they should make some sort of safety tech mandatory. Not just SawStop but Bosch Reaxx and the systems that Felder and others use?

 

[luvmytoolz]

This may be old news, but I just read it today. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is trying to make Saw Stop technology optional only. They are opposing making it mandatory. I am still processing this information in my mind and I am undecided.

Here is the article I read. The claim is that the legislation would double the cost of the table saws and enrich one manufacturer. But, if I recall correctly, Saw Stop never wanted to produce table saws at all. They wanted to license the tech, but there were no takers. I think I would be OK with this legislation, if Saw Stop got out of the saw business and went back to the licensed-only business model.

FTC Says a Table Saw Safety Rule Must Be Scrapped. Here's Why

The regulator says a safety rule meant to prevent tens of thousands of finger amputations a year would hand one company too much power.

www.inc.com

Sawstops owned by TTI now, I don't think there's any scenario in which they aren't making saws and leveraging the tech.

 

[Packard]

Back in the early 1980s, my stopped car (an Audi Quattro) was rear-ended by a SUV traveling at over 60 mph. The driver never applied his brakes, so I got the full force of the highway-speed SUV. The results: The seat back mechanism failed and my seat back collapsed into a full recline position. Then my head hit the seat back of the rear seat at full force. I ended up wearing a neck brace the entire summer and having the doctor call me “lucky”.

The reason I am telling this is because a few years earlier, Mercedes Benz applied for and recieved a patent for a seat back mechanism that would be able to resist the forces of a SUV traveling at 60 mph and hitting a stationery vehicle.

Mercedes decided that the positive publicity for sharing that technology was more valuable than having exclusive rights to use it, and they offered to license it for free to any car manufacturer who wanted to use it. The said it added about $4.00 per vehicle for the upgrade. There were no takers.

Based on my experience, I am doubtful that any saw manufacturer would have adopted the Saw Stop technology, even if it was offered for free.

About 25 years ago, I designed a very different type of life raft that offered greater safety to the occupants that would need the services of a life raft. I also offered the design for free to three different life raft manufacturers. They all declined. The all said that they believed it would be a safer life raft, but it would add cost and they were not interested.

So, unless the Saw Stop technology reduces the cost to manufacture the saws, I predict that none of the saw manufacturers will voluntarily adopt the tech. No proof to support that statement. Just history.

 

[onocoffee]

Packard - to your point, the SawStop legend is that the founder went to the saw manufacturers to offer the tech at the outset. They all declined citing cost factors and we are where we are today. Thanks capitalism as religion society.

But as luv says, I doubt that today TTI would be interested in licensing the tech for cheap or free. However, government regulation requiring some form of limb-saving technology on table saws would force innovation (or at least more creative means of skirting around it).

 

[Crazyraceguy]

I have nothing against the tech whatsoever, but I really don't think it's a government mandate issue.
I'm sure that sounds even sillier, from a guy with 1/2 a thumb, but it was not the saw's fault, nor the company who made it.
If there are people willing to spend the extra, for the tech, let them. If it gets mandated, the price will go up, not down, because there is no alternative. Bring on the "used" market. Prices will soar there too, less than the new ones of course, but more than they are worth.
If they can do that, the logical next step is the same as car seats for babies and lawn darts. They are not even legal to sell in your yard sale.
If this happens, what's next?
Guns don't shoot people
Pencils don't misspell words
Forks don't make people fat
I would say "cars don't run over people" too, but some of these autonomous ones do....
They can't ban everything, at some point, people have to take responsibility.
People take the guards off of angle grinders all the time.
Someone is always going to defeat a safety feature. The government can't regulate that, closest you get is insurance companies, but don't give them any ideas.
I don't see why they couldn't license it and produce them too. That is done all the time, but it won't bring the price down, with a mandate in place.

Back in the day, I had issues with Anti-lock brakes. Initially it was only on high end cars Mercedes Benz, etc.
So, you're driving down the road following one, at a reasonable distance, and something happens. It doesn't matter what. You both hit the brakes at the same time. It tops shorter than you possibly can. Now not only have you hit someone, it's an expensive car too.

 

[Packard]

I have nothing against the tech whatsoever, but I really don't think it's a government mandate issue.
I'm sure that sounds even sillier, from a guy with 1/2 a thumb, but it was not the saw's fault, nor the company who made it.
If there are people willing to spend the extra, for the tech, let them. If it gets mandated, the price will go up, not down, because there is no alternative. Bring on the "used" market. Prices will soar there too, less than the new ones of course, but more than they are worth.
If they can do that, the logical next step is the same as car seats for babies and lawn darts. They are not even legal to sell in your yard sale.
If this happens, what's next?
Guns don't shoot people
Pencils don't misspell words
Forks don't make people fat
I would say "cars don't run over people" too, but some of these autonomous ones do....
They can't ban everything, at some point, people have to take responsibility.
People take the guards off of angle grinders all the time.
Someone is always going to defeat a safety feature. The government can't regulate that, closest you get is insurance companies, but don't give them any ideas.
I don't see why they couldn't license it and produce them too. That is done all the time, but it won't bring the price down, with a mandate in place.

Back in the day, I had issues with Anti-lock brakes. Initially it was only on high end cars Mercedes Benz, etc.
So, you're driving down the road following one, at a reasonable distance, and something happens. It doesn't matter what. You both hit the brakes at the same time. It tops shorter than you possibly can. Now not only have you hit someone, it's an expensive car too.

Seat belts became mandatory in cars by the early 1970s—maybe a few years earlier. I will have to google that. My 1961 Saab had 3 point seat belts, so they were available even before that.

Wearing one became the law in New York State around 1970 and you could get ticketed for not wearing one. Prior to that, you could get ticketed for not wearing one if you were stopped for some other offense. But the cops could not pull you over simply for not wearing one.

My uncle steadfastly refused to wear one his entire life (he died in the early 1980s). He said the government had no right to dictate what risks he took with his own life.

I am no hearing that same argument over blade stopping tech. The objection does not even seem to be coming from the end users at all. It seems to be coming from the saw manufacturers.

Right now, the Saw Stop saws cost more than their equivalent non-equipped competitors. If all saws have to equipped with Saw Stop tech and pay a licensing fee for that tech, then either Saw Stop will become the bargain saw on the market, or it will become the profit leader in the market. In any case, all of Saw Stop’s competitors will oppose mandating the tech.

Save your older table saws. There will be a market for them from people like my Uncle who will eschew any tech in that regard.

My older Contrators’ II Delta saw came with a splitter that was so tedious to use that it got put aside after the first week. Someone will come up with a method to save fingers that is similarly cheap and tedious to use. This conversation will be over and no fingers will have been saved.

 

[rmhinden]

I own a SawStop table saw and wear seat belts when I drive.

While I am fine with people making decisions that might cause them to be injured or die, where I disagree is if they then use insurance to file a claim for medical benefits. That causes my (and everyone else's) insurance rates to go up. In that sense it is no longer an individual decision.