Donald Trump’s yes-men at the Consumer Product Safety Commission are withdrawing a series of proposed safety rules, including an appendage-saving safety mandate for table saws. This will mean thousands more fingers lost per year.
Donald Trump’s yes-men at the Consumer Product Safety Commission are withdrawing a series of proposed safety rules, including an appendage-saving safety mandate for table saws. This will mean thousands more fingers lost per year.
I think there’s a bit more nuance with this one. I’m all for safety and all that, but the fact that one company, SawStop, owns the patent for the blade stop system that they’re trying to mandate is a pretty big issue. Sure they’ve pledged to not enforce the patent if the mandate goes through, but that’s entirely on their word, nothing in writing. The cost of a saw would go up if they don’t waive the patent enforcement and manufacturers have to pay to license the technology (or some other related patent that the system can’t function without). Also, if the saw manufacturers are also making saw blades, they’d probably end up selling more blades as a result of the blade stop, since iirc, the system shunts a hardened steel block into the path of the blade as soon as it detects an electrical current from your finger (or a hot dog in all the demos lol), which stops and breaks the blade in the process. Dunno if that would make up for lost sales due to higher prices, tho.
None of this would effect table saws that already exist, and higher prices may drive people to buy more used stuff, rather than new stuff.
On top of dealing with the SawStop patent issues, there’s other things that could also help with table saw safety, like designing blade guards that people don’t want to remove cuz they get in the way, that aren’t addressed by this mandate. This NPR article from 2024 kinda talks a bit more about the whole issue around the blade stop mandate.
Not to say that this mandate shouldn’t happen, I’m more concerned about it being implemented in a way that won’t drive people away from buying saws with a blade stop system due to price
While I completely agree with your reasoning as far as it goes, I find it hard to believe this is the first incident of a proposed mandate where one company owns a blocking patent. There are reasonable ways to handle this, and most likely a pattern of previous examples. Why can’t the mandate take this into account.
Maybe the mandate could be contingent on them not enforcing their patent, maybe an independent testing entity, maybe everyone could compromise on smaller fees and objective qualifications so no one can be blocked. Heck, maybe it’s time to seize the patent by eminent domain, or to use that threat if needed for a fair negotiation