A Federal Fathers’ Day Present: Higher Prices for Table Saws

Just in time for Father’s Day, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has proposed a new safety standard for table saws, which account for two-tenths of one percent of all consumer-product-related injuries. The standard would prohibit table saws from making a cut more than 3.5 millimeters deep when a probe designed to simulate a human finger makes contact with the blade.

The proposed regulation is a response to a 2003 petition from the inventor of a technology that makes a table saw blade stop automatically when a finger gets near. You can see a demonstration here using a hot dog instead of a finger. The saw also has a bypass mode in case you do need it to cut a hot dog, a bratwurst, or one of those hard Italian salamis.

In contrast to the popularly-peddled morality play myth that regulation always protects consumers from businesses, this regulation would give one or two businesses an advantage over others whose (less expensive) saws do not have this kind of safety feature. Two companies have sold saws in the United States that comply with this standard. They are currently engaged in a patent infringement lawsuit, so the number may end up being one.

Even without a monopoly, these saws are expensive. According to CPSC figures, bench saws (the lowest-priced category of table saws, typically purchased by homeowners) usually cost between $129 and $975. The bench saw models that meet the proposed standard cost between $1299 and $1499. CPSC staff analysis projects that the cost of the least expensive table saws would more than double (NPRM, p. 22,217).

Men suffer more than 96 percent of table-saw-related injuries, and more than two-thirds of table-saw-related injuries happen to people over the age of 50. This regulation could very well protect men in the 50-plus set from injury by ensuring that they can’t afford to buy home table saws! Contrary to the popular t-shirt, I guess old guys don’t rule — at least not at the CPSC.

Let me propose a much less expensive solution that can actually be retrofit on any existing table saw. The picture to the left shows the safety device my Dad installed on Ye Olde Family Table Saw after he cut his finger on the blade. That little white thing hanging to the left of the on-off switch is a plastic cap the doctor installed on my Dad’s finger while it healed. The message is simple and impossible to ignore every time I turn on the saw: Keep your fingers away from the blade!

This device has been highly effective in accomplishing the intended goal. The saw has been through numerous remodeling projects in multiple homes, and no one has cut a finger (or any other body part) on it since Dad hung the gruesome little reminder more than 40 years ago! Below is a photo of some 1/8” strips I recently ripped from an 8 foot cedar board; this involved some finger work close to the blade, but no mishaps.

The CPSC’s staff dismisses the idea of using warnings as an alternative to the proposed regulation, claiming that research shows warnings (and customer education generally) are less effective than designing the product to remove hazards. Even if this is true for table saws, well-designed warnings could produce a greater difference between benefits and costs than the proposed design standard, because warnings would prevent some injuries at relatively low cost.

One might argue that no warning is necessary when the consumer already sees a high-velocity sharp thing spinning right in front of his face. As CPSC Commissioner Joseph Mohorovic noted in his dissent from the proposed rule, “A table saw’s operative component is a sharp blade spinning at thousands of revolutions-per-minute and capable of cutting through wood or metal. This must be one of the most obvious hazards in the consumer product space, and any reasonable consumer can appreciate the hazard… Any reasonable consumer understands that contact with the blade makes injury a certainty, and that the only question is how severe the injury would be.” Even Weird Al Yankovic knows this.

Still, that old plastic finger cap is a useful reminder that makes me think twice before I turn on the saw. And it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than doubling the price of a table saw.