SawStop, stops on contact with skin is coming to Europe soon!

[Kevlar123]

In addition to woodworking I also climb, in climbing there are a subset of climbers that feel that using ropes means you don't climb at your best and don't maintain the same level of concentration. These guys are called free solo climbers, you can find a pretty comphensive list of the most famous free soloers if you head to the free solo wiki page and then drop down to the Climber fatalities section.

Statistically these guy are absolutely the best in terms of not falling, a regular climber will fall many times in their careers but on average free solo climbers only ever fall once.

For climbers rudimentary safety involves using safety equipment that is available and a culture of encouraging safety in other climbers, especially new and inexperienced climbers. This attitude makes climbing a safe sport. Now if you went to a climbing forum and discouraged people from using ropes you would be banned pretty instantly.

Discouraging the use of safety equipment that can save lives because it will make people less safe is a logical fallacy. The tablesaw is objectivly the most dangerous woodworking powertool and injuries are devastating and sometimes fatal, no amount of rudimental safety changes the fact you are moving your hands towards a spinning blade or human nature and the capacity for error and neither does survivorship bias or situations can occur that are out of our control.

Rudiemental woodworking safety that discourages the use of objectively safer equipment is out of touch and out of date.

 

[Chris West]

Why though? Asking because I have a strong negative connotation with that sort of idiocy.

Because I live in a rural area with lots of ancient narrow winding roads. In order safely pass a bicyclist, I can wait a mile or more to insure there is no risk of anyone getting hurt. On a few occasions, a cyclist has waved me to pass them only to discover there was a car coming the other way on a curve or hill the cyclist could not see around. Worse yet, when there is a whole gaggle of them, one may have to wait for several miles to find a safe place to overtake. Irritating.

 

[Jacob]

Because I live in a rural area with lots of ancient narrow winding roads. In order safely pass a bicyclist, I can wait a mile or more to insure there is no risk of anyone getting hurt. On a few occasions, a cyclist has waved me to pass them only to discover there was a car coming the other way on a curve or hill the cyclist could not see around. Worse yet, when there is a whole gaggle of them, one may have to wait for several miles to find a safe place to overtake. Irritating.

Oh dear that's sounds very distressing!
Maybe you should stop trying to drive on ancient narrow winding roads, or perhaps have some more driving lessons?
One thing you would learn is that it's quicker and more convenient to wait until safe to pass a group of cyclists, rather than having to pass them one by one stretched out down the road.

 

[Doug71]

And I was just typing we have an ongoing thread about sharpening and one about SawStop/push sticks and then someone goes and mentions cyclists........................

 

[Jacob]

I can't edit my posts on this thread! Why not?
I was going to add that the highway code has been amended recently and drivers nees to catch up.
https://www.cyclinguk.org/safer-highway-code-cyclists

 

[Jacob]

I can't edit my posts on this thread! Why not?
I was going to add that the highway code has been amended recently and drivers nees to catch up.
https://www.cyclinguk.org/safer-highway-code-cyclists

not nees - I meant need!
I can't edit my posts on this thread! Why not?

 

[Jacob]

In addition to woodworking I also climb, in climbing there are a subset of climbers that feel that using ropes means you don't climb at your best and don't maintain the same level of concentration. These guys are called free solo climbers, you can find a pretty comphensive list of the most famous free soloers if you head to the free solo wiki page and then drop down to the Climber fatalities section.

Statistically these guy are absolutely the best in terms of not falling, a regular climber will fall many times in their careers but on average free solo climbers only ever fall once.

For climbers rudimentary safety involves using safety equipment that is available and a culture of encouraging safety in other climbers, especially new and inexperienced climbers. This attitude makes climbing a safe sport. Now if you went to a climbing forum and discouraged people from using ropes you would be banned pretty instantly.

Discouraging the use of safety equipment that can save lives because it will make people less safe is a logical fallacy. The tablesaw is objectivly the most dangerous woodworking powertool and injuries are devastating and sometimes fatal, no amount of rudimental safety changes the fact you are moving your hands towards a spinning blade or human nature and the capacity for error and neither does survivorship bias or situations can occur that are out of our control.

Rudiemental woodworking safety that discourages the use of objectively safer equipment is out of touch and out of date.

But the conversation should be about how to avoid accidents, rather than promoting the purchase of a somewhat ill considered protective device, which offers nothing to the users of the millions of other machines in use.

 

[Kevlar123]

It's not either/or, best practise and safer equipment don't conflict.

 

[Jacob]

It's not either/or, best practise and safer equipment don't conflict.

But this particular safer equipment is not applicable to existing users of millions of existing machines.
They are not equivalent to free climbers as most of them have and use perfectly adequate safety procedures: they know not to put their hands too close, to use crown guards, to use push sticks, power feeds, and risk is vanishingly small.
Also free climbers have freely chosen to risk life and limb, as a particular challenge/achievement, woodworkers are not in the same game!

 

[Chris West]

Oh dear that's sounds very distressing!
Maybe you should stop trying to drive on ancient narrow winding roads, or perhaps have some more driving lessons?
One thing you would learn is that it's quicker and more convenient to wait until safe to pass a group of cyclists, rather than having to pass them one by one stretched out down the road.

Judge much? The only access to and from my home are narrow roads.

 

[Kevlar123]

Safety in woodworking is evolvolutary rather than revolutionary, those millions of tablesaws will continue to cut wood and most new tablesaw purchases won't have saw stop. I'm not sure why this would be a problem with people buying a safer saw though. Most people won't have sawstop so lets discourage people buying it?

Moving towards a jagged edge at speed is risky whether its climbing or woodworking, climbers will feel the tug on their harness in a fractions of a second and anchor themselves again, woodworkers can hear the sound of crunching of metal against metal and look at their hand in relief. Choosing to use ropes or sawstop is now a choice people can make. In both of these incidences the safety equipment makes the persuit safer.

No free climber thinks they will fall just like no woodworker thinks they will lose a thumb. Free climbers have years and year experience and have normally mastered the sport and have incredible technical climbing ability, they plan routes in more detail, follow weather reports and never attempt moves beyond their ability, their proceedures are the best. They won't have made a mistake for 100s of climbs but then a massive rock hits them on the head or their knife slips out of their hand and they try and catch it. Gravity and spinning metal don't have considerations for our capacity to make errors. You can reduce your risk of error substationally but you can never eliminate it and on a long enough time scale your chance of having an error always approaches 100%.