You can win $1.5 million! A bit on woodworking safety.
I've been meaning to talk about shop safety for a while. The recent news that a jury awarded a guy $1.5 million prompted me to do so.
I feel that safety is not the ultimate goal in woodworking. Creating something out of wood is first. I recommend reading Mike Rowe's article about Safety First.
It is allllllll true. This is my fear, and I seem to remember hearing somewhere that this happened. My fear is that the insurance companies are going to start saying "Oh you didn't have a Saw Stop … well sorry that injury isn't covered." Get's into that silly existing technology crap.
Nice video. Well said. Safety is a concern. In some cases in the construction industry "SAFETY is actually causing bigger accidents". Yes I said it ! Example is the roofing industry. People are relying on the "SAFETY equipment to prevent accidents" Common Sense prevents accidents !!!!! People that cannot walk on the level ground should NOT try to go on a roof, be connected with a lanyard, and expected to do the job. I do not want to be on the roof with these FOOLS, no matter how I am tied on ! When I attended Cabinet makers school it was accident free since it began. The year I went, the same "STOOGE cut his thumb in half, before that even healed he PLANED his little finger OFF. " I often wondered if they passed him ?" Point is, that man should NOT have been in a carreer that required--------COMMON SENSE.
I wonder if the person that sued ryobi for the saw incident was related to the fool that drank the scalding cup of coffee at McDonalds ? Safety is Important,
Nice. You remind me of Dr. House. But in a wood shop.
There is an entire generation of kids growing up who feel that they do not have to have any personal responsibility. Believe me, my wife teaches nearly 200 of them every year.
The table saw incident and jury ruling further shows that people don't take personal responsibility for their own mistakes, no matter how stupid.
I cut my wrist open when I was putting a steel shed together and had to get 6 stitches. I would never consider suing Sears or Arrow. I've had a Phillips bit skip out of a screw head and land with the weight of me pushing down land on my knuckle and twist the skin off. Maybe my hand shouldn't have been so close. I didn't sue DeWalt or the company that made the screws. I've shot finishing nails and brads through my fingertips on several occasions. Never bothered to have a lawyer call Porter Cable because I should have known better. Utility knife across the knuckles? My fault again, not Stanley's.
The lessons here? Pay attention to what you are doing. Take responsibility for your own safety. And CA glue is a great alternative to a band-aid - especially the quick set variety. I always keeps some in my first aid kits.
I'm all for minimizing risk and improving safety, but some people take it to ridiculus extremes. The best safety measure is to use common sense and pay attention to what you're doing.
My last job I worked in stock/receiving, after several accidents, the store actually required (not that I ever did it) that we use the safety style box cutters rather than a regular utility knife. In case you've never used one of these, it has this big metal guard next to the blade so that it becomes very difficult to cut yourself. Or the thing you're actually trying to cut…pretty f'n useless IMHO. Sure I've nicked myself a bunch of times with a regular knife, a few times pretty badly…but only when I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing, and I was the one to blame, not the knife!
Well they passed health care today, so I guess your on the wrong side of the fence Steve. Looks like if we don't buy Goverment Health care, the IRS, will run our a__es down and throw us in prison. They are after all just looking after our safety.
Your points are well thought out, but 1.5 mil judgement dosen't cover the expense of the big gun lawyers so were probably safe for a few years. Liked the flashlight warning, I have that flashlight and never bothered to read the warning, and thankyou for telling me what the red line on my miter saw is for, It's good to know it's exactly a foot from the blade.
You probably look to much like House to get your own wood working show…but I'll be watching for it anyway!!!
I don't know anything about the actual lawsuit and there doesn't seem to be a lot of details immediately available. Maybe the case had merit and maybe it didn't. I'm just sorry to see all the knee jerk reactions against the lawsuit. These are different times. It used to be that boys were trained on this stuff in HS shop class. It used to be that these tools were expensive enough that you probably had the good sense to know what you were getting into before plunking down the money. These tools today are sold in big box stores for so little money that they are impulse buys for people that have no business whatsoever owning such a tool. And there's no reason for them to think otherwise.
It is wrong to think it's common sense that power tools are dangerous. It's commons sense to people that have experience using power tools. It isn't common sense to people that sit at a desk all day and then see a tablesaw at Lowe's one aisle away from the paint brushes. It isn't common at all and these companies should not be pushing these tools on an unsuspecting consumer.
Furthermore, these really cheap saws are crap and the manuals suck. They are accidents waiting to happen. And they do happen. The statistics on tablesaw injuries are abysmal.
You should read up on the SawStop inventors and what they went through. These manufacturers didn't reject the technology because it was expensive. The truth is that if they did adopt the technology it would get a lot cheaper and it would be affordable. The truth is that they didn't want to create the perception that the tools without the technology were dangerous. They want people that have no business operating a tablesaw to pick one up at Home Depot on a whim.
And lastly, please don't use the coffee at MacDonalds story to slam frivolous litigation. That lawsuit is generally regarded as a shining example of the system working properly. There are plenty of details on that story and you should look them up.
Good video. People need to be willing to take responsibility for chains of events that they have initiated. If something is defective, that is one thing. Poor judgment or poor work practices are quite another. Motor vehicles are a good example. When they first became available, there were no driver's licenses. It wasn't until the 1940's and 1950's that it became common in the US for drivers to pass some sort of test before being given a license. Do we want to start requiring similar education for table saws? Band saws? Chisels?
Freedom of action, and responsibility for those actions have to be intertwined. When people no longer are willing to take that responsibility, they almost always lose some degree of freedom of choice. We live in a more or less free market society. If people value something, there is usually a company that will produce a product for that market. If someone chooses to remain uneducated, then chooses to do something that can potentially harm themselves, then why should someone else bear the cost?
If I hopped on a motorcycle, and wiped out going around a corner, should I be able to sue the manufacturer because they didn't include 'training wheel technology' in their product?
Your videos are usually fun and funny. Not on this one…your message is totally off. How are you going to do woodworking when you don't have fingers ? With all due respect to your person, you lack logic and intelligence in this video.
I once got my thumb a little bit too close to the blade on my table saw. I was fortunate and only took about 1/8" off of the very tip. I did not feel the need to sue Craftsman. However, I learned a very important lesson. "KEEP YOUR D&^%& FINGERS AWAY FROM THAT BIG SHARP SPINNY THINGY - STUPID!"
Steve, well said.
As the comedian, Ron White used to say "You can't fix STUPID."
GarageWoodworks: Yes, I really do think safety shouldn't be FIRST. If it were my number ONE concern, I would take the safest course of action and not do woodworking at all. THAT would be safety first.
Taking on the RISK is first. Safety has to come after, or we would take up knitting.
This safety first argument is a Straw Man fallacy. Nobody promoting "Safety First" is suggesting that you should never, under any circumstances, take any risk. Of course there are tradeoffs. But if I've got to choose between milling that tenon and keeping my finger (either, but not both), then I gotta say I'm going without the tenon. Ridiculous as my hypothetical scenario is, it's no worse than the "we'd never do anything" interpretation of "Safety First". Reality lies in between.
I understand what you are saying Steve. I do believe in safety but I don't go overboard with it. The guy that sued Ryobi is an ass as he obviously did not read his instruction manual. All the warnings are in the manual. Sawstop is a patented product. Once the patent has run out then it should be made available to other manufacturers. Until then.people USE COMMON SENSE
? I seen a powermatic.
Even the safest wood worker can be distracted for a moment….FLING GO THE FINGERS!!!
LOL
Your missing the point, read Steves Hyper link, also I would suggest listening to everything
Steve has said in the video, you'll be less mithed if you open minded. The whole presentation of safety 3rd is
to make you realize what the real pecking order is and promotes safety.
This is a social web site also, I would suggest lighting up.
Hey guys lets not blow this thing out of proprtion. Steve is just voicing his opinion. Which, by the way we are all aloud to do. This bashing of other Lumberjocks needs to stop.
First, you're a raving idiot. Second, you're the last guy in the world who should be saying anything remotely about shop safety. Refer to the ridiculous cove cutting methods on your Youtube box building video (hopefully they've been removed by now). How you still have all of your fingers is a miracle. Go lay by your dish and think about what you've done.
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