Power Saws Do Not Just Kill People in Halloween Movies, They Also Injure and Cause Death to Workers, Contractors, and Homeowners

Each year, over 67,000 thousand contractors, homeowners, woodworkers, carpenters, and others suffer traumatic injuries, amputations, nerve damage, tendon damage, and even death due to power saw or table saw injuries.

Just recently, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted unanimously to institute rules that would make power saws safer to use. At this time, it is not yet determined whether the CPSC will mandate that the SawStop technology will be required on all power saws.

The SawStop addition to power saws could make power saw accidents almost non-existent or avoidable, but saw manufacturers like Delta, Back and Decker, and Rigid and Ryobi have not yet adopted the patented technology behind SawStop, so people and workers will continue to be injured or killed by power saw accidents.

The patented SawStop technology used in SawStop saws prevents catastrophic accidents or wrongful deaths due to deep lacerations and excessive bleeding that are usually caused by power saw accidents. SawStop causes a saw blade to reduce its speed from 5,000 rpm to 0 rpm in milliseconds, thus preventing a serious injury. How SawStop does this is very similar to how touch lamps work. If you touch the base of a touch lamp, the light turns off. It does that because when you touch the base of the lamp, the water content in your skin interrupts the small electrical current that is flowing through the base of the lamp and it triggers the lamp to shut off. The Saw Stop safety feature works in the same way. The saw blade carries a low level of electrical current and if it comes in contact with your skin, the current is interrupted and it immediately shuts off the saw. Now that this technology is available, why don’t all power saws have this safety feature?

Just last week, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $1.5 million jury verdict in favor of a man who was catastrophically injured due to a power saw accident because the Ryobi saw he was using was not equipped with the SawStop safety feature. Now that it is common knowledge that the SawStop technology can save lives and limbs I hope that this limb-saving modification will be added to all power saws. Until then, the product liability and wrongful death lawsuits due to power saw injuries will likely continue.

Here at the Beasley product injury law firm, we have over 50 successful years of representing clients who were injured by a product, when the injury could have been easily avoided in the first place. To date, we have had over 2 billion awarded on behalf of our injured clients. Our full time, in-house physicians, nurses, and attorneys have evaluated thousands of cases where someone was injured due to a faulty product. If you or a loved one has been injured due to a power saw or table saw injury, please feel free to contact us and speak to a member of our experienced medical, legal, or product injury defect teams. When you call us, you will only speak to an attorney, physician, nurse, or member of our highly experienced product liability team, and not a secretary. For over 60 years our product liability attorneys in Pennsylvania have successfully helped others that have been injured and we are still here to help you and your family now.