There are a lot of fine ideas that have no business being mandatory.
There are a lot of fine ideas that have no business being mandatory. An example of this would be the emergency brakes on some table saws, a mechanism that detects a user’s finger as it approaches the blade and brings the rotating steel and carbide teeth to a halt in a fraction of a second. The tech is brilliant; it really is. But due to a highly litigious company (SawStop) owning the only active example of such tech, a potential mandate from the Consumer Protection Safety Commission — the feds — for similar tech on all saws is unnecessary and anti-consumer. But first, a bit more detail about the safety mechanism.
There are various table-saw safety guards available, made out of metal and plastic. But only one company, SawStop, sells a consumer table saw that can stop and retract the blade in milliseconds once it detects the small electrical signal from a finger.
SawStop holds over 100 patents, many directly related to the safety mechanism. Its table saws cost several hundred dollars more than the most popular competing models, and sometimes more than $1,000 extra.
Few consumers choose to pay the price. In 2016, the most recent year with available sales data, less than 2 percent of the 675,000 table saws sold in the United States were SawStop saws.
Now the safety commission is considering mandating that the finger-detection system be included in every new table saw. SawStop currently produces the only consumer table saws that could be sold under the proposed rule.
Price matters, and SawStop is not competitive. My family has a SawStop cabinet saw ($5,000). It’s fine, but the saw acts and feels like a much cheaper model except for the safety bits. It’s certainly no Jet or Powermatic 66. I also own a jobsite DeWalt saw that’s often found on sale at Home Depot for under $400 with a stand included. I love that saw — the SawStop equivalent is pushing a thousand dollars. Ryobi sells a comparable version for $229. For some — readers of the New York Times, for instance — price may not matter. But for guys ripping MDF on a jobsite all day, every day, a $700 swing for a tool that’s no better than its peers is a major outlay, and SawStop’s warranty (one-year) isn’t the equal of a Ryobi (three-year), Milwaukee (five-year), or DeWalt (three-year).
While I respect the government’s efforts to increase the cost of building and purchasing houses as much as the next homeowner, it seems a bit much to triple the cost of a jobsite staple for features that will be turned off as soon as the saw is removed from its shipping materials. After all, the SawStop brake is sensitive to electrical current and has the habit of activating in wet wood, when striking an embedded nail, or upon discovering a sap pocket in lumber. Those who’ve spent any length of time on a construction site know that the material is often exposed to the elements, as are the tools themselves.
The agency estimated that new bench table saws would cost $338 to $1,210 more with the finger-detection system.
The commissioners’ vote is likely to fall along partisan lines: Three of the four current commissioners are Democrats, and the rule will probably pass.
It would go into effect after three years. SawStop’s chief executive, Matt Howard, has pledged to open one of the company’s key patents to competitors when that happens.
He said it would be “incomprehensible” if other companies did not have their own offerings in three years, and blamed them for failing to invest in research and development.
But the Power Tools Institute, an industry group, has said rival companies won’t be able to start development before SawStop releases the patent, because SawStop could sue the companies for using the patent in prototypes.
What SawStop has developed — a brake that saves saw users from untold pain, medical expense, and loss of employment — is incredible. Its limitations in the market, however, as well as those inherent to the device, make it relatively niche. Should the patent expire on the technology and the rest of the industry get a chance to develop their own brakes, I can see revisiting the idea of including a brake as an option in the future after economies of scale have had their say. But for now, with the sole producer begging the feds to require their tech, I can only offer a one-finger salute (having lost the other four making cutting boards for an Etsy storefront).