Accident reports

[Mark Hennebury]

In light of a recently posted accident on a table saw, i found that i had many questions, as usual.

So i would like to propose an accident report topic.

The idea is to post information about accidents, with a full description of how they happened, showing photos of the setup, the operation, safety devises or lack thereof, time of day etc.
A full and detailed description of how and why the accident happened.

There are many opinions on what is and is not dangerous behavior, but it would be interesting to find out what actually causes accidents, and if there are patterns.
I think that this would provide some real clarification on why and how accidents happen.
Maybe with a list to fill out, providing detailed information.

[Simon MacGowen]

This does not provide some of the details you had in mind, but it allows one to find out the injury data OHSA keeps, simply by typing the machine (eg table saw -- over 10,000 reports) in the Keyword field: https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.html There are many injuries reported under chop/mitre saw or circular saw as well.

Click on the Summary Nr to see the detailed description of the injury, which in many cases offers clues why the accident happened, such as not using a guard, wearing gloves that got caught(!), or standing too close to the saw when it was turned on (by someone else), etc. Another example:

"At 9:30 a.m. on September 19, 2017, Employee #1 was using an unguarded table saw to perform a non-through cut, commonly referred to as a rabbet cut, without utilizing a feather board or a push stick. The specialized cut called for a rip cut, half of the thickness of the board on two sides of the board, which would notch out a corner piece of the board. The employee was making the second rip cut of the piece of wood when the blade struck a knot in the wood, causing the employee's hand to be drawn into the blade."

SawStop has also kept a list of finger saves reported by the users. I have not visited its site for a while, but I recall seeing photos and causes (as submitted by users).

Simon

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi Simon,

I would like to see a full description of what was going on, with photos of the operation, stock, equipment etc..and most reports don't give enough information (for me at least) to understand what happened and why.
"The employee was making the second rip cut of the piece of wood when the blade struck a knot in the wood, causing the employee's hand to be drawn into the blade."

This makes no sense to me. What size was thew stock? what size saw, saw blade, what size rabbit, was it being cut from the face and edge, how did his hand get into the blade, was it a solid knot or a loose knot, why did cutting a knot make his hand go into the blade, and how. how was the pesron holding the wood, how were they standing? The whole thing makes no sense to me.

I have cut rabbit hundreds of times, i have cut through thousands of knots. I don't get any understanding of "causing the employee's hand to be drawn into the blade."

Maybe its just me but i don't understand what happened in this instance as in most accident reports. Not enough information for me to make any sense of it. Detailed information photos or sketches would help to fully understand what went wrong and aid prevention by others.

[Peter Christensen]

Mark one of the reasons you don't see all the detail you are asking is the reports are usually done by a first aid attendant writing the info down in limited spaces on the form after the guy is treated. We only put enough information for Workman's Compensation to know what the injuries were, with the treatment given and that was added to by the companies own investigations (trying to present the accident in the best light for the company). They aren't lengthy so as to not complicate the claim and confuse the claims adjusters. If they had any questions they asked. To provide pictures and lengthy detailed write-ups for all the injuries from slivers, cuts, sprains, dust in the eye, back injuries to people passing out only happens with the more serious events. The cited report is actually pretty good until the end and is way more detailed than I as a First Aid Attendant would have written down.

Now for a Sawmill Creek educational report the injured can go back and take pictures of what happened and provide a more detailed writeup of the events and causes leading up to the injury followed by the subsequent hospitalization, rehab and steps taken to prevent recurrences. A standardized form would be great if it could be downloaded, filled out as best recalled, add pictures, uploaded to be read and data complied within the forum for educational purposes. If it is too involved nobody will bother and if minimal you're not going to be satisfied. A new heading with its own Safety Moderator perhaps?

[Simon MacGowen]

(trying to present the accident in the best light for the company).

In one of the OHSA reports (https://www.osha.gov/injuryreport/2015.pdf - p.6), they documented how one employer tried to hide his/her "sin" (unsafe shop practice) by moving all the unsafe equipment (that caused the injury) to a backroom, and blocked the door with forklifts to cover their tracks!

Although the OHSA statistics does not provide all the details such as photos, it does cover all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable situations in which injuries occurred. I still recall an injury recorded there about a man getting his fingers cut by the tablesaw because he was rattled by a light bulb popping unexpectedly.

Simon

[mreza Salav]

I suspect what you get here is a very biased (towards hobbyist) sample and hence any conclusion drawn from that (from statistical point of view) is not valid. It can be used as educational of what can be unsafe practices. The sample taken at ER is much better.

[Peter Christensen]

The accidents compiled in Sawmill Creek over a number of years would provide statistical information largely biased towards the hobby woodworker including hand tools that would not show as a blip in industrial accidents. For those interested in their own safety it will educate them into adopting better practices rather than what they watched on YouTwit. If our reports show that hobby woodworkers have a larger percentage of table saw injuries than industry then emphasis on preventing them can be made here. Same thing goes for router or chisels. What ever our biggest offenders are would show where to be more careful. There will always be the ones that can't be told but that's true of everything. The only thing we can't do that a business can do is fire repeated safety violators.

The idea of a standardized safety report and a safety forum is worth exploring. If all the blood and gore is in one section rather than scattered throughout the forum some might get the message.

[Martin Siebert]

I would be interested in reading about accidents too. The biggest problem is getting people to be honest about it. You can generally tell if someone is being pretty honest or not though. It is hard for many to admit they did something that cost them an injury. It's also interesting how some guys turn things around to read that "the saw did it" or "the knot pulled me right in"....
it also might be a little boring...I've been very careful around machines and also very lucky in general. The worst injury I have suffered in a wood shop or as a result of working with wood was a simple splinter in my finger when I picked up a board. It was about 1/4" long and went just under the skin. I pulled it out easy enough and it wasn't "there" for more than 30 seconds. I went back to work and forgot about it, it didn't even bleed. Later that night my finger started to tighten up. The next morning I woke up with a slight fever and a finger that was very tight and hardly able to move.
The resulted in an overnight stay in the hospital being on a drip IV of a very powerful antibiotic. Took a week to get the infection under control and another week before I got full use again. It gets your attention when they start talking about having to possibly take off your hand!!! A Sawstop is not the answer to everything.
Had a buddy go thru the same thing only worse. His splinter went straight in and they had a lot more trouble getting the infection under control. They thought he must have still had wood in his hand and had to do exploratory surgery. Over 200 stitches later and an allergic reaction to the antibiotics the guy almost died. All this over a stupid little splinter!!!

[Simon MacGowen]

A Sawstop is not the answer to everything.

Anyone who thinks a sawstop is a cure-it-all machine should not handle any power tools. All other machines like the chop saws, circular saws, planers are just equally dangerous...and relying on the sawstop as an alternative to safe shop practices is a troubling thought to say the least.

But IF the worst hits in a tablesaw accident involving contact with a racing blade, there is no better solution than a sawstop or reaxx. That's a fact borne out by the finger save stories documented in the public domain. Sawstop is insurance in my shop.

Simon

[Ken Fitzgerald]

The problem with having members at SMC filing accident forms is that not everybody would use the same standards for filling it out. Thus, the information would be less than accurate.

Rather than use a social media forum such as SMC to gather the information, I'd suggest that the government information in Canada where the OP resides and in the US would be more accurate because the people filling it out do so on as part of their profession.

[Edwin Santos]

In light of a recently posted accident on a table saw, i found that i had many questions, as usual.

So i would like to propose an accident report topic.

The idea is to post information about accidents, with a full description of how they happened, showing photos of the setup, the operation, safety devises or lack thereof, time of day etc.
A full and detailed description of how and why the accident happened.

There are many opinions on what is and is not dangerous behavior, but it would be interesting to find out what actually causes accidents, and if there are patterns.
I think that this would provide some real clarification on why and how accidents happen.
Maybe with a list to fill out, providing detailed information.

This is a great idea, but unfortunately SMC is probably not the right forum to carry it off, at least with any consistency, as others have pointed out.

In a company environment where an owner or manager has control, I think it would be a sign of very good management to have proper pro-active safety training plus when something goes wrong do a careful root cause analysis, re-create the accident conditions and have an employee meeting to turn it into a teachable event. Accidents are always going to happen around cutting tools and machinery, but we should seize the opportunity to learn from them which is where I think you are going in suggesting the idea.

It would be ideal if there was the opportunity for a foreman or manager to be watching what was going on in the shop at all times. But I realize the economics of the world require everyone to be directly productive, and unfortunately the owner is too often pulled in so may directions in the course of a day, there is little time for safety monitoring and process improvement.

Edwin

[Rod Sheridan]

This is a great idea, but unfortunately SMC is probably not the right forum to carry it off, at least with any consistency, as others have pointed out.

In a company environment where an owner or manager has control, I think it would be a sign of very good management to have proper pro-active safety training plus when something goes wrong do a careful root cause analysis, re-create the accident conditions and have an employee meeting to turn it into a teachable event. Accidents are always going to happen around cutting tools and machinery, but we should seize the opportunity to learn from them which is where I think you are going in suggesting the idea.

It would be ideal if there was the opportunity for a foreman or manager to be watching what was going on in the shop at all times. But I realize the economics of the world require everyone to be directly productive, and unfortunately the owner is too often pulled in so may directions in the course of a day, there is little time for safety monitoring and process improvement.

Edwin

Good points Edwin.

Where I work incidents are analyzed by the Safety Policy Committee, as are Near Miss reports. These are a very valuable source of information to help prevent future incidents....>Rod.