Originally Posted by
Mike Henderson
Let's use your accident rate of 3% per year. So each year, you have a 97% of not getting injured. But now, we have to look at your chances over time.
What is your chance of getting injured over two years? To calculate it, we multiply your chance of not getting injured each year - 0.97 * 0.97 = 0.94 or about 6% chance of getting injured sometime in two years.
Doing the math, you have about a 50% chance of getting injured over about 22 to 23 years. And that's injured enough to wind up at the emergency room.
This doesn't mean you can go 23 years without injury. It means that 50% of woodworkers will wind up in the emergency room within 23 years and 50% will not wind up in the emergency room in that time. (That's actually not exactly correct because some visits could be repeats, people who were injured multiple times, but it's close.)
You could be the one who winds up in the emergency room in the first year, or you could be one who never winds up in the emergency room.
Do you want to play those odds with your fingers?
Mike
[If a 3% accident rate per year seems too high to you, do your own calculations. Just keep in mind that woodworkers are a relatively small part of the population of the United States. Using your accident rate of 1.2% per year, you have about a 25% chance of injury over 22 to 23 years
What probability of injury are you willing to tolerate over your woodworking career?]