What is it value to you to minimize the danger of getting your finger cut off?
300 dollars? $600? $1,200? Or is it worthless if you think you’re already careful enough?
If you are a woodworker and wish to spend enough money, you should buy a table saw that detects fingers and stops the blade as follows:
(The hot dog is your finger.)
Would you pay extra for this feature? What if the federal government told you you had no selection but to pay? What if just one company held the patents on the safety mechanism?
Government mandates for brand spanking new safety technologies are classic trade-offs, whether the product is a power tool, a automotive, or a pill. In this case, regulations requiring the sale of table saws with this protection could mean saving several thousand fingers per 12 months. However, they may lead to higher costs for consumers.
Once technologies are patented, the trade-offs can grow to be much more pronounced, reminiscent of high prices (and high profits) for pharmaceutical firms in exchange for brand spanking new drug innovation. In the case of table saws, it could also lead to a period of less competition and greater profits for the corporate that developed the security mechanism.
Among the tools you might find in someone’s garage, table saws are essentially the most common reason behind serious woodworking-related injuries: annually, they’re answerable for roughly 30,000 injuries requiring emergency room treatment and nearly 4,300 amputations.
By comparison, hundreds of other products monitored by the federal consumer safety agency are answerable for about 3,600 amputations annually total.
Various safety guards for table saws can be found, product of metal and plastic. But just one company, SawStop, sells a consumer table saw that may stop and retract the blade in milliseconds after detecting a tiny electrical signal out of your finger.
SawStop has over 100 patents, many directly related to the security mechanism. Its table saws cost several hundred dollars greater than the preferred competitor models, and sometimes greater than $1,000 more.
Few consumers select to pay this price. In 2016, essentially the most recent 12 months for which sales data can be found, lower than 2 percent of the 675,000 table saws sold within the United States were SawStop saws.
The Safety Commission is currently considering making it mandatory to install a finger detection system on every recent table saw. SawStop currently produces the one consumer table saws that could be sold under the proposed rules.
During a hearing on the sensitive agency in February, Democratic commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. accused large power tool firms of not caring in regards to the safety of their consumers and showed photos of people that had undergone amputations after table saw injuries.
Peter Feldman, the lone GOP commissioner, blasted SawStop’s chief executive for not agreeing to license the technology. “Rather than trying to compete fairly,” Mr. Feldman told him, “I see what you are doing as pure and simple rent-seeking behavior.”
SawStop was founded by a patent attorney in 2000 and initially tried to license its finger detection technology to other firms. When that failed, in 2003, SawStop petitioned the security commission to require finger detection systems on all table saws – a regulation the commission may soon approve.
When SawStop began selling its own saws, it gained a status for litigiousness: In 2015, it sued Bosch to prevent it from selling a table saw with a similar safety feature, citing patent infringement.
However, the security committee generally doesn’t address the potential for patent disputes or effective monopoly. “The CPSC does not address competitive implications; deals with security issues,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, an antitrust expert on the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.
Since the 2003 SawStop petition, the Commission has debated issues of safety. In 2017, commissioner of the Republican Party he argued this regulation was unnecessary, indicating that customers knew how dangerous saws were, but most selected not to pay the SawStop premium.
But in an interview, Robert S. Adler, a Democratic commissioner from 2009 to 2021, said table saw injuries didn’t pose a “reasonable” risk beyond the agency’s reach. “All it takes to cut your finger,” he said, “is a sneeze or a knot in the wood.”
The agency calculated that introducing the security mechanism would end in a mean “net social benefit” of about $3,000 for every recent table saw, the kind of saw most hobbyists and entry-level contractors are likely to buy. That figure includes medical bills and lost income, although almost 70 percent of that quantity is for “pain and suffering.”
The agency estimated that recent table saws would cost between $338 and $1,210 more with a finger detection system.
The commissioners’ vote is probably going to be partisan: Three of the 4 current commissioners are Democrats and the rule will likely pass.
It would enter into force after three years. SawStop CEO Matt Howard has pledged to make one in every of the corporate’s key patents available to competitors when that happens.
He said it would be “incomprehensible” if other firms didn’t have their very own offer inside three years and blamed them for lack of investment in research and development.
However, the industry group Power Tools Institute stated that competing firms would not have the opportunity to start development before SawStop issued the patent because SawStop could sue the businesses for using the patent in prototypes.
Bosch, which reached an agreement with SawStop for a competing product, said it would take six years to bring it back to market. Shabir Balolia, chief operating officer of Grizzly Industrial, one other competitor, said it would likely take 4 years to develop a recent saw once the patent was issued.
Matt Outlaw, who runs a popular woodworking company Youtube channel, expressed concern about possible price increases for amateur carpenters, but overall supported the proposed rule. Mr. Outlaw, a former Arkansas state trooper, recalled the seat belt laws he enforced: Not everyone likes them, but the security advantages are proven.
When it comes to table saws, he said, “who wouldn’t give $400 for a finger?”
