Ed in Tampa wrote:Having been the financial backing guy for a general constractor I can tell you if the cheap throw away saws we bought for under $200 would have cost $400 we would not of bought them. I personally bought 3 over the course of out building venture and I know this for a fact since I was the one that bought them.
I'd hope that anybody financially backing a contracting company today would want to do a little more math than compare the costs of buying three $200 saws to three $400 saw (neither of which had a brake).
Instead, he'd want at a minimum to compare the costs of buying (in your example) three $200 saws without a brake to the costs of buying three $400 saws with a brake (or whatever its price was, even let's say the far superior $1500 existing contractor saw SawStop currently sells).
Then he'd want to go to his workers' comp insurer and ask, "how much can I save on my worker's comp premium today if I switch today to a safer saw?" Then he'd compare the "savings" from buying the $200 cheapo saws to any savings he could immediately obtain from his workers' comp insurer for switching to the safer more expensive saw and base his decision on that.
Given that table saw prices (even those of cabinet saws) are trivial compared to workers' comp rates, I'd suspect that any immediate discount offered by the workers' comp insurer would dwarf the cost of buying the safer saws.
But even if his workers' comp insurer offered no immediate discount, a really sophisticated financial guy would take his analysis further. He'd try to figure out the probability of one of his workers actually having a major accident on the cheapo saw and how much that would increase his workers' comp premiums on a go forward basis and then compare those potential future costs to the increased costs of buying the safer saw to see whether it still made economic sense to buy the cheaper but less safe saw. He'd also want to know the cost in lost productivity time while the employee was out and/or the cost of hiring and training a new employee if the guy was hurt so bad he couldn't return to work.
Ed in Tampa wrote:Ryobi is already at a competitive disadvantage. They have reduced their product line down to the point you can hardly find one of their products.
Since Ryobi sells exclusively though Home Depot, you might want to look there.
On a more serious note, it is debatable that offering a $400 saw with a brake would be a competitive disadvantage to Ryobi compared to others offering $200 saws without them. What is not debatable, however, is that Ryobi is $1.5 million poorer for not having put brake technology on its saws when it had the chance. Assuming that for every $200 table saw Ryobi sells through Home Depot it made a 25% profit, i.e. $50, Ryobi would have to sell 30,000 more table saw to make up for that one judgment. If Ryobi's profit per saw was only 10% ($20), which I suspect is a lot closer to the real number, Ryobi would need to sell another $150,000 saws to make up for that one judgment! Talk about your competitive disadvantage! By the way the licensing fee Gass wanted from Ryobi was 3% (8% if every manufacturer also agreed to his license), i.e. $6 a saw for a $200 saw. So Ryobi would have had to sell 250,000 saws at $200 before its royalty payments to Gass would have equaled the cost they are now paying for not taking a license from him.
Ed in Tampa wrote:Having had to buy workers comp I also know that your premiums go up with every claim. Ours did and we didn't have a claim when we asked about the increases we were told that they were having to pay out more so they were charging more. We finally got out of the business because of things like workers comp, contractor liability insurance, etc.
Supports my point above that table saw costs are trivial compared to the costs of workers' comp. Those are driven, in large part, by catastrophic injuries, one source of which (blade contact injuries) would be significantly reduced or eliminated if more manufacturers offered safer saws or more contractors switched to safer saws. More importantly, if you knew how worker's comp worked, why did you suggest in your prior post that Osorio verdict would somehow drive up workers' comp claims. It can't, for the simple reason that employers are immune from suit under workers' comp. If anything, if the Osario verdict (or more like it) encourages more manufacturers to offer saws with braking technology or if more contractors opt for SawStop, workers' comp rates should not continue to go up as a result of blade caused table saw injuries. And that would be a good thing for contractors.
Ed in Tampa wrote:Also from talking to other guys in the business most accidents down happen because the worker got his hand in blade. Many happen because the worker cut his hand on the sheet metal edge of the saw cabinet, dropped the saw on to his leg, twisted his back throwing it in the truck, got something in his eye because he wasn't wearing safety glasses when he was cutting on the saw. or tripped over the cord.
In my years of home building/woodworking I saw a few people hurt but none from having their hand cut in a running saw blade. My neighbor may be the one exception but both he and I agree his thumb was not cut by the blade but smacked hard enough by kickback to split open his thumb. Something sawstop would not have prevented.
This is a why Vegas if profitable and why people who go to Vegas, as a whole, are not. People who aren't trained statisticians or actuaries are for the most part pretty lousy at calculating the odds of something good or bad happening to them.
I'm happy, that neither you nor your friends has ever seen a table saw blade accident. Neither have I (although I've met quite a few carpenters and cabinet makers who are missing fingers). But neither my anectdotal experience or yours or those of your friends combined makes up anything more than a statistically insignificant percentage of the population that uses table saws. There's no doubt that many such injuries have occurred and the stats have been compiled and can be read in the CPSC's rule making file.
