On Sat, 9 Jun 2007 13:58:30 -0400, "Mike Marlow"
wrote:

I'll tag onto Brian's comment with a bit of reinforcement. I believe he's
right in that look how often we see posts here about accidents happening to
folks with all sorts of safety equipment on their tools. Yet, somehow the
accidents happen. Brian isn't arguing against safety equipment, he's
arguing in favor of the most fundamental of all safety equipment -
awareness. Wait long enough and a post will appear about someone who
whacked off a couple of fingers on a SawStop saw, just like we read about
kickback and fingers in blades with splitters and push sticks and...

That's absolutely true. I've already said that I think the SawStop is
a fine machine, at least from what I've heard and read in reviews, but
it is expensive, simply because it has a piece of technology on it
that doesn't stop accidents (like a blade guard, splitters, etc), it
just stops you, in theory, from getting injured in an accident. I'm
not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but the way to avoid
injury isn't to stick another piece of nanny technology on your saw,
it's to be more careful to begin with.

This isn't even like automotive safety equipment. In a car, you can
still have some other idiot run into you and cause you damage, but a
tablesaw is pretty much a solo piece of equipment. You're not going
to get sideswiped by someone else driving their tablesaw through your
shop. The cause of just about every tablesaw injury is user error,
using it while tired or impaired, not practicing sensible safety
precautions, making dangerous cuts, not waiting until the saw blade
has stopped, etc. *ALL* of these are completely avoidable. You'll
never need the SawStop if you never put your fingers into the blade,
as an overwhelming majority of woodworkers manage never to do.