I am a NON SS user with no blood letting, but a couple of little kickbacks, but on things that should not have been doing. One was a small cut off that tipped back into the blade and was blown into little bits as it shot out, the other was when cutting some styrofoam sheets that tend to move around due to light weight. Large sheet being moved and bent into the blade, made a nice half moon cut in the foam, but no injuries.
On the SS the originator is a woodworker who is a "LAWYER" not saying anything bad about lawyers in general, but he wanted to get a monopoly on making the SS technology standard on all TS and maybe other saws also. So it was for the money and I don't knock him for being a capitalist, but as a lawyer he was and is prone to laws, and lawsuits etc. and when the guy got the award for his own stupidity when using a small saw on a job sight, that lawsuit opened the floodgates for the SS dream on every saw. Here is an excerpt from a report on new UL standards:
PTI is made up of well-known manufacturers of portable and stationary power tools. It's a trade organization whose members have invested $100s of millions to increase safety in table saws. The facts are often quoted in support of statistics that show the number of horrific accidents due to improper use of table saws. In reality, however, injury rates have gone down even though power saw usage has more than doubled in the past 10 years. One of the primary ways in which injuries have been reduced is through the use of new voluntary standards that have been adopted by UL. For example, UL 987 includes a completely revamped table saw guard design along with other standards and has debuted in more than 800,000 saws since 2010.
Here's the kicker: to-date, there have been no reported blade contact injuries on table saws with the new guard. None. That's not to say that there can't be, but the new designs are sufficient. On top of that, improper use of the table saw (including removal of the guard) is the cause of nearly all table saw injuries and the new UL standard makes it more convenient to keep the blade guard on while making a variety of cuts. The new guards also give users better visibility and can be easily removed in parts to facilitate a greater amount of safety on a variety of cuts. The new UL 987 guards are designed not only to protect the operator from blade contact, but also from injuries due to kickback.
So what's going wrong? Well, the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) is being pressured for new safety standards, specifically referencing new technology that will apply to all table saws. In particular, the company doing the majority of the petitioning is SawStop, owned by Stephen Gass, a patent attorney. Mr. Gass, holds more than 70 U.S. patents (with over 120 filed), meaning that SawStop would have a total monopoly if the CPSC adopted their specific petition request.
So as you can see, it always comes back to the operator and how safe they are, because no matter what type of safety is put on a tool, someone will find away to get around it and hurt themselves. So follow the rules, keep gaurds in place and don't cut things that should not be cut on a TS.
You are your best safety!
My 2 cents,
Jeff
To turn or not to turn that is the question: ........Of course the answer is...........TURN ,TURN,TURN!!!!
Anyone "Fool" can know, The important thing is to Understand................Albert Einstein
To follow blindly, is to never become a leader............................................ .....Unknown