After years of allowing the power tool industry to police itself through voluntary standards, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is calling on toolmakers to strengthen safety standards. These actions come as table saw manufacturers face an increasing number of product safety lawsuits throughout the country.  One of those lawsuits resulted in a jury awarding $1.5 million to a man who had sawed his fingers on a Ryobi brand table saw.  In that lawsuit the plaintiffs charged that the manufacturer had known about a safety technology called SawStop, but had not integrated it (or something similar) to its products.  No less than 50 similar lawsuits are pending nationwide, putting manufacturers on the defensive.  Every day 10 people lose fingers in table saw amputations and the chairman of the CPSC would like to know why more isn’t being done to prevent such accidents.

Most table saw operators who injured themselves removed the blade guard for operational convenience, according to a CPSC study conducted from 2007 to 2008 that looked at 66,900 “blade contact injuries.”  For that reason, CPSC is considering requiring that table saws come with a safety brake like the one offered on SawStop contractor and cabinet table saws, according to NPR.  Within three-thousands of a second of contacting human skin, the brake fires and the blade drops down into the table, preventing injury.