Comment by zdragnar

Table saws, in spite of being used far less than kitchen knives, account for far more digit amputations and more serious ones.

It is pretty uncommon and rather difficult to cause yourself a digit injury that cannot be recovered from with a kitchen knife. Bad technique is most likely to lop off the end of the fingertip which can fully regrow so long as the cut isn’t very deep.

Mandolines and meat slicers (guards are bypassed when cleaning which happens every 4hr, they also tend to be used by 16 year olds) are much much more dangerous but they tend to be dialed in quite shallowly which limits the damage.

Table saws are THE most dangerous thing for your fingers because of where people tend to put their hands when using the tool and how they can go right through your digits and how they’re dialled in to make thick cuts. The logic that well if we accept kitchen knives we shouldn’t have safety regulations on table saws doesn’t make sense because table saws are far more dangerous and unlike with kitchen knives it’s actually possible to enforce the default use of an effective safety mechanism which ensures a cut will usually be shallow enough to be recovered from. Of course some people will disable the brake excessively but the average person will likely keep it on most of the time.

You can argue we shouldn’t have this safety regulation because it will add costs to consumers, and point out that other safety approaches already exist, the safety paradox, but the comparison to kitchen knives doesn’t really make all that much sense. I’d argue adding saw brakes as a standard feature makes a ton of sense due to the high social cost of digit amputation and the inconvenient and frequently ignored use of other safety approaches.

Easy to cut yourself with a kitchen knife, hard to cut your finger off. Safety being proportional to harm is perfectly reasonable.

> There's never an actual reason you need to put your fingers anywhere close to a moving blade.

But that's how it is: people do cut their fingers off on table saws. They all know what you said. And yet 30 K accidents per year in the US alone. It is a serious problem.

I never bought one because it's just too big of a risk.

You hit a knot in your 2x4 while on a table saw and you might be surprised when you see your fingers laying on the ground and you thought you were being safe too.