How to save 10,000 fingers

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Table saws are extremely dangerous. The government estimates that injuries from table saws send something like 30,000 people to the emergency room every year. 3,000 of those end in amputations. The costs of those injuries are enormous. Are they also avoidable?

In 1999, inventor Steve Gass had a realization: Humans conduct electricity pretty well; Wood does not. Could he develop a saw that could tell the difference between the two?

Steve invented a saw that can detect a finger and stop the blade in milliseconds. Then, he tried to license it to the big tool companies. He thought it was a slam dunk proposition: It would dramatically reduce the injuries, and the cost of medical treatments and lost wages associated with them.

On today's episode: What does it take to make table saws safer? When someone gets hurt by a power tool, there are tons of costs, tons of externalities. We all bear the cost of the injury, in some way. So, it can be in society's best interest to minimize those costs. We follow Steve's quest to save thousands of fingers. It brought him face-to-face with roomfuls of power tool company defense attorneys, made him the anti-hero of the woodworking world, and cost the lives of many, many hot dogs.

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Transcript

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0:25.0	Of all the power tools in a wood shop, I am most scared of table saws. My father, a nine and a half fingered carpenter, never let me get near them.
0:37.5	When I started working at a cabinet factory, the instructions were clear. Of all these extremely dangerous spinning pieces of metal,
0:45.2	the table saw is the one I should be the most careful around. And yet, the other day I was getting
0:51.3	ready to get dangerously close to one.
0:56.7	I'm in a wood shop just outside of Portland, Oregon, and not just any workshop.
1:01.9	It is the cleanest, most well-organized shop I have ever seen,
1:06.2	not a speck of sawdust.
1:08.6	And in the middle of it, there is a table saw.
1:12.2	A table saw is what you use when you want to cut something the long way generally.
1:15.9	So picture a table and sticking out of that table is a very sharp blade, about the size of a
1:21.7	dinner plate, spinning very fast.
1:25.4	And the person operating this table saw right now is someone who has tried to make table saw
1:30.9	much safer. I'm Steve Gas, I am the inventor of saw stop. What does saw stop do?
1:36.8	Saw stop is a technology for table saws that if you run your hand into the blade it stops
1:41.1	it so quick you just get a little nick instead of cutting your
1:43.3	fingers off. Really? Really? Every time. You think we can test that out? Oh yeah.
1:57.6	I am not ready just yet to sacrifice a digit for podcasting but at Steve's suggestion I have brought a pack of hot dogs actually beef brats they were cheaper
	...

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