Comment by elihu

I can see some potential issues with this:

1) Patents. The article goes into this a bit -- supposedly the folks behind SawStop have said they'd open up a key patent, but I wouldn't want the U.S. government to mandate this without reading all the fine print and making sure that this can't be used by SawStop to crush all their competitors.

2) Materials. I often cut aluminum on my table saw, using a non-ferrous metal cutting blade. (It works fine for wood too.) As I understand it, SawStops are activated when they detect high conductivity materials. How does this work for cutting metals?

3) False positives, repair costs. Replacing the blade periodically due to accidentally cutting wood with slightly-too-high moisture content would get tiresome. (For that matter, so would putting off a project for months if I have to wait for the wood to dry out.)

I'm generally in favor of safer tools, but it seems like there are some significant trade-offs involved here.