Comment by hilbert42

It depends what the item is. Its intrinsic dangers and whether they're obvious or not to (a), the untrained and unskilled; (b), novices with little training and experience; (c), trained users but who are irregular uses and get out of practice; (d), trained users with regular/daily experience, (e), specialist users without experience or with little regular experience who take particular care in dangerous one-off situations; (f) specialist users who've regular/daily experience of dangerous situations; (g), any or all of the above under specialist/controlled conditions or in special environments and (h) any or of the above in emergency situations—who is selected and or authorized to take charge under under adverse/dangerous situations.

That list might seem like a lot of twaddle, but I'll illustrate with a few examples. Case (e) may involve an industrial chemist who is put in the unusual situation of having to deal with a dangerous, toxic and explosive chemical that's not normally found in common use—for example, pentaborane which comes to mind because it's a HN news item today. He knows what it is and its dangers but he hasn't dealt with it before so he goes to inordinate lengths to handle it safely. On the other hand, case (f) is a Similarly trained chemist with special training in the handling of pentaborane and he applies a regulated set of procedures to handle the substance.

Table saws are both intrinsically unsafe and have high impact when things go wrong which is borne out by statistics no matter the jurisdiction, country etc. Unfortunately, like motor bikes, they've been historically grandfathered into common use from an era when safety was hardly considered important.

Had motorbikes been suddenly invented today they wouldn't be allowed on public roadways. Same goes for table saws, they can be bought freely and anyone can use them without any training whatsoever. If invented today one would have to be trained and or licensed to use them.

We've seen how regulations change over time and how they are becoming tighter every day just about everywhere. When I was a kid, where I live anyone could buy fireworks including yours truly at the age of six. Now fireworks have been banned altogether here, not even adults such as I am who've (a) been trained in chemistry and (b) had military training and who was trained in handling things much more dangerous than fireworks for domestic consumption can do so either. I find this both irritating and irksome and an over intrusion of the nanny state into my affairs.

I'd suggest that those who voted down my original post also felt this way when they read my post, and I don't blame them one bit. The trouble is multifold, the State regulates, say fireworks after irresponsible use and after kids have become blinded. Regulations are introduced more from emotional reasons than based on actual harm to large numbers of people. The law now makes no exception for experience, nor does it allow exceptions for those with demonstrable experience (the only exception here is those with special training for public displays such as for new year's eve).

We've seen this progressive tightening of regulations in just about every country on the planet and in every field of endeavor—from drug regulations, to vehicle licenses, to firearm licenses and regulations, to restrictions on purchasing what the State perceives to be dangerous chemicals (when I was a kid local pharmacists sold thallium and strychnine for rat poison to anyone but they've long since been banned (I'd doubt if these highly toxic chemicals can still be purchased anywhere in the Western world).

The trouble is that laws and regulations are horribly uneven and often they extend into overregulation.

Now look at the facts: both thallium and strychnine were banned in many places decades ago because of a small number of accidental poisonings and an even much smaller number of deliberate ones. On the other hand, table saws—according to statistics—have maimed and ruined the lives of orders of magnitude more people than those poisons have ever done but it's only now that we are just trying to make them safer.

Unlike motor vehicles and forklifts, there's still no talk of training people before they can use table saws—nor is there any talk of requiring users to be licensed to use them.

When looked at objectively and in comparison with similar regulations elsewhere, this tightening of regulations in respect of table saws really isn't that unreasonable, and by other comparable standards it's long overdue.