Money for the stupid

[newt]

Found this on the Knots forum. I am gobsmacked :x





A Boston jury has awarded $1.5 million to a Malden man who injured his fingers on a saw while installing oak wood flooring several years ago in a first of its kind case that claimed the standard design of American table saws is defective.

Carlos Osorio accused One World Technologies Inc., maker of Ryobi saws, of negligence for failing to include a flesh detection technology that would prevent most serious injuries, according to a copy of the complaint filed in 2006 in US District Court in Boston.

After five surgeries and years of rehabilitation, two of Osorio’s fingers are permanently disfigured and unusable, and he has suffered numbness and loss of feeling in three other fingers.

“Hopefully, this means the industry is finally going to recognize that catastrophic injuries could be averted and they need to make this technology standard so people don’t have these senseless injuries,’’ said Richard J. Sullivan, one of the lawyers representing Osorio.

 

[xy mosian]

I'm sitting here shaking my head in disbelief.
That stopping technology must have been fairly new then. Woe betide anyone who does not use the very latest safety features, even if they have not heard of them. Still it keeps the money go round churning, and the wasteful use of planet resources increasing.
At least hand saws come with an 'in-contact with flesh' stop feature. But only for the less dense

xy

 

[Philly]

Awww... the name got me. I thought I was about to claim some free money..... :wink: :lol:
Philly

 

[wobblycogs]

Wow, only in America (I hope). While I have sympahy for the guy - loosing fingers would put a damper on anyones day - I can't help feeling this is the wrong outcome. I'd bet a pound to a penny the guy was rushing to get the job finished or just doing something fundamentally stupid.

What's interesting about the saw stop demos I've seen on the Intertubes is they never drop / throw the sausage onto the saw blade as would happen with a bad kick back or if you slipped into the blade. I wonder if it would stop fast enough to save your hand in that case?

 

[TrimTheKing]

What's interesting about the saw stop demos I've seen on the Intertubes is they never drop / throw the sausage onto the saw blade as would happen with a bad kick back or if you slipped into the blade. I wonder if it would stop fast enough to save your hand in that case?

I imagine you would get more damage than the nicks they show, but definitely massively less than if the blade carried on spinning.

Only your flesh and bone to stop it then. :shock:

 

[ondablade]

I suppose that in the end this is what you get when you build a dog eat dog legal system, and a culture based on rule of the strongest.

The guy probably had no health insurance because it's so massively expensive in the US, and is up to his neck in hock with ruinous medical bills from the same mob of robbers as a result of having no significant public health system, can't work at what he did because (whether stupidly or not he cut half his fingers off), and gets so significant disability support because why should the strong help the weak? In the meantime there's probably minimal opportunities around for him to re-train.

If he was rushing it was probably to get the job out yesterday while under the cosh from his customer - or simply because how else do you make a decent income?

The judge is beyond being talked sense to (because independence of the judiciary is required in a society where (with a fair amount of justification) everything operates on the basis that nobody can be trusted), and the saw manufacturer is meanwhile doing everything he can to avoid responsibility and the need for investment in both the design and claim scenarios.

The same guy if he had decent social security would probably have avoided the accident, but only because he very likely would have been swinging the lead instead of doing some useful work.

The legal eagles meanwhile probably went for broke on the basis that they get a %, and anyway want to make a name for themselves.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not pushing for some sort of utopia and it's fast going that way here - and that's not because of the systems, but because they evolve to reflect the way we are. This kind of crap is the inevitable result of all concerned acting out of self interest....

ian

 

[wills-mill]

Has Saw Stop been installed in lightweight mobile saws for contractors? In handheld circular saws? :roll:

 

[Mike.C]

Has Saw Stop been installed in lightweight mobile saws for contractors? In handheld circular saws? :roll:

http://www.wwgoa.com/reviews.cfm/mode/details/id/4978 As it happens there is a contractors saw, but it seems that the industry as a whole are refusing to fit it to their own saws for one reason or another. One article I read stated the feeble excuse that if contractors were out in the field and miles from the nearest town when the sawstop kicked in, there would be a lot of down time while the contractor went and purchased a new cartridge, because apparently under certain conditions when it the sawstop is tripped you need to fit a new cartridge. But I would have thought that carrying a spare cartridge would solve this :roll:

Cheers

Mike

 

[JoinerySolutions]

This was covered in an american forum and was deleted by the moderators after some spleen venting and name calling ensued!!
This sort of lack of common sense with both operator and "legal system" often gets heated debates and phrases like 'nanny state' get used.
Made me laugh out loud when I read that term applied to the Obama Administration. :lol: :lol:

 

[jlawrence]

I'm surprised at the outcome of this.
Surely (correct me if I'm wrong), sawstop would be patent protected - this would mean that other manufacturers wouldn't be able to install it without paying licences. Or is sawstop a product in it's own right as opposed to something invented just for use in the sawstop saws ?

Can't we sue someone because the design of our hands ain't right - after all if it were designed differently then it wouldn't get damaged as much if we stuck it into sharp things spinning at thousands of rpm.
What a load of tosh.

 

[Mike.C]

I'm surprised at the outcome of this.
Surely (correct me if I'm wrong), sawstop would be patent protected - this would mean that other manufacturers wouldn't be able to install it without paying licences. Or is sawstop a product in it's own right as opposed to something invented just for use in the sawstop saws ?

Can't we sue someone because the design of our hands ain't right - after all if it were designed differently then it wouldn't get damaged as much if we stuck it into sharp things spinning at thousands of rpm.
What a load of tosh.

Yes Sawstop is under patent, and a few years ago the designers offered other companies the chance (probably as you say under licence) to fit it in their saws, but I read somewhere that for some reason most of them (probably jealousy) told them to stick it.
I cannot see why other table saw manufacturers would not jump at the chance of making their saws safer. Maybe they are waiting for the patent to run out, or they were being charged to much to use the idea. Whatever the case, at least one company (above) has got to pay for the mistake, and one man has lost the use of some fingers.

Cheers

Mike

 

[newt]

I think saw manufactures are worried that they could not fit all the saws in circulation retrospectively, and would then be open to litigation if only fitted to new saws.

 

[wobblycogs]

I can't see even the American courts trying to force manufacturers to retro fit saw stop. It wouldn't be practical and probably unprecedented. As long as the saw was safe when it was manufactured they should be able to leave it as is.

The parallel to draw here is with air bags in cars - manufacturers didn't have to recall all cars and fit air bags in fact I think they are still techinically an optional feature even though they have been shown to save lives.

I'm just waiting for the lawsuit against saw stop because their device didn't trigger when someone was acting like a prat on their TS (wearing gloves probably).

 

[PeterBassett]

One article I read stated the feeble excuse that if contractors were out in the field and miles from the nearest town when the sawstop kicked in, there would be a lot of down time while the contractor went and purchased a new cartridge

As opposed to the downtime caused by going to buy new fingers. :lol: You've got to love that logic.

 

[newt]

I can't see even the American courts trying to force manufacturers to retro fit saw stop. It wouldn't be practical and probably unprecedented. As long as the saw was safe when it was manufactured they should be able to leave it as is.

.

I agree they should not be forced to, but does that now mean that all accidents on table saws without SS will be subject to a law suit as in the above example, a precedent has now been set.

 

[Digit]

Asking for trouble that is. What happens if the device fails? Great big brightly coloured guards every time for me.

Roy.

 

[9fingers]

Does anyone know what the false alarm rate is for SawStop?

I wonder how well it differentiates between frankfurters, fingers and wet timber - eg tanalised wood. As each activation needs a new cartridge and possibly a new blade, even one false alarm is bad news for home users.

Yes the cost when it saves a finger is well worth it but only if it has no false alarms.
Maybe there is away to disable it for wet wood working?

Bob

 

[newt]

Bob you can switch it off for wet wood, and there lies a gotya.

 

[9fingers]

Thanks Pete.

Yes it could be a gotcha but I guess it is virtually impossible to 'guard' against all idiots.

Be nice if it had a test mode whereby you could offer up a bit of wood the stationary blade and it beeped if it would then trigger when running.

It could also beep periodically if the saw was running and yet the device was disabled.

Bob

 

[wobblycogs]

Last I read sawstop wet wood seemed to be quite a problem as people reported it trigging even when the wood wasn't that wet. I think they might now be using a more sophisticated detection system thats not so prone to the problem.

I'm pretty sure the blade is wrecked when it fires though. I can't believe the blade is in a very good state after being stopped in that manner. The brake cartridges have come down in price a lot though. A couple of years ago they were about $200 they are now a more reasonable $70.