This is an unpleasant topic, to be sure, however it's a question that has been nagging me ever since my safety-minded brother-in-law, upon hearing that I was going to purchase a PM2000, asked "why not the SawStop?"
My primary reasoning, as silly as it seems in hindsight, was that all of the other stationary tools in my shop are Powermatic.
Now, having the benefit of learning from many of you (long-time anonymous lurker, first-time poster), the recent thread http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=81807 has put me close to the tipping point where I'd like to sell my PM2000 and replace it with a SawStop.
Before I do, however, I'd like to ask one last question, which is the point of this thread (whew, this is a long intro!).
One tiny seed of doubt that was put in my head from a local Woodcraft owner was that the majority of TS accidents were from kickback, not skin-blade contact. That got me thinking....
Is there any information, either quantitative or qualitative, about the relative injury rates of major woodworking accidents? I've heard that certain tools are more dangerous than others -- the jointer, for example, is frequently mentioned, and there's no SawStop for that (yet?) -- however I use my TS much more frequently than my jointer.
So if you had to guess, for any potential major accident in the shop, which are the most frequently occurring?
[For the curious, if the consensus is that TS skin-blade contact is high up or at the top of the list, that will be the tipping point for me.]