Comment by Eridrus

If we're going to do a cost benefit analysis, we need to be pretty certain that the costs do in fact outweigh the benefits. We have hobbled Nuclear power over safety concerns and it's pretty clear we got that one completely wrong with huge negative consequences for society. This is obviously not on the same scale, but it's easy to get these things wrong and never revisit them. From the federal register notice on this, 70% of the supposed societal cost is pain and suffering, which frankly, individuals can decide on for themselves about the risks.

If you take out the pain and suffering values from these costs, you actually find that the cost benefit analysis doesn't pass at all, coming in at 0.5bn to 3.4bn in the red depending on the cost of the regulation on consumers, per the agency's own analysis.

If you got and read what people think about these regulations about people who use the tools, e.g. on /r/tools, they are unanimously opposed to them. Many people have complaints about the proposed products not working as advertised and generally wanting to bypass the system entirely: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/19fmzko/are_you_in_f...

And that gets to the other part of this issue, if the regulation passes, what is the actual behavior change that will happen? Will people buy these saws and use them in the intended manner, or will they switch to alternatives that are just as dangerous, or will they simply turn off the safety features because the false positives are expensive ($100+ in direct costs without counting productivity losses). And note: all the SawStop products have off switches for the safety because they have false positives on wet wood and conductive materials like aluminum.

The headlines for these regulations are always great since nobody likes losing fingers, but there are always trade-offs, and it is extremely easy to make mistakes in these calculations and not foresee the actual knock on effects of them.

Particularly in this case where costs are largely internalized, rather than externalized.