Dave Hinz wrote:

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 11:44:24 -0500, alexy wrote:

Do you also avoid wearing seat belts, since they do not prevent death
or serious injury in every accident? How about airbags, which have
been known to CAUSE injuries. No, I don't think that perfection is the
right standard for removing from the novelty category.

If the sawstop people had just marketed their product as a safety
device, I might have agreed that this is a good analogy. After all, any
automaker can add a seat belt to their cars. However, their tactic was
to try to get the government to _force_ saws to be sold with their
exclusively patented device.

Actually, while I am AGAINST gov't mandates in this instance, remember
that both seatbelts and airbags appeared as voluntary items only very
briefly before they were mandated (and are airbags mandated, or just
effectively so from the "passive restraint" regs?). And those for
mandated sawstop technology will correctly point out that airbags were
affordable only on Mercedes-class cars before mandates, but now add
not that much cost to a $10,000 car.

Where the analogy breaks down in my opinion is the inability to apply
this technology to very inexpensive saws. How do you add this to a
$150 bench-top "table saw"?
--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.