A while back, we brought you news of proposed federal rulemaking that would influence table saws. This week, a committee in the California legislature approved a similar bill at the state level. The “AB 2218 Table Saw Safety Act,” originally introduced by Assemblyman Das Williams (D), “Prohibits the sale of any new table saw on or after January 1, 2015, unless that table saw is equipped with active injury mitigation technology.”
“Active injury mitigation technology” is defined in the bill as “technology to detect contact with, or dangerous proximity between, a hand or finger and the teeth of the blade above the table top of a table saw, and to prevent the blade from cutting the hand or finger deeper than one-eighth of an inch when the hand or finger approaches any portion of the blade above the table top at a speed of one foot per second from any direction and along any path.”
This week’s action in the California State Assembly saw the Committee on Business, Professions and Consumer Protection pass the bill, on an 8 to 1 vote, with referral to the Committee on Appropriations. Nine trade groups, including the California Medical Association, California State Council of Laborers, Consumer Attorneys of California and the State Building and Construction Trades Council, are listed as having registered support for the bill. No opposition is on file.
At this time, no date has been set for the Committee on Appropriations’ hearing of AB 2218 Table Saw Safety Act. You can follow the bill’s progress at the following link, by inputting the bill number:
http://www.legislature.ca.gov/the_state_legislature/bill_information/bill_information.html
Full text of the bill is available as .pdf here: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_2201-2250/ab_2218_bill_20120224_introduced.pdf
Contact information for California Assembly members, including websites, mailing addresses and office phone numbers, can be found here: http://www.legislature.ca.gov/legislators_and_districts/legislators/your_legislator.html
A listing of members of the California State Assembly Committee on Appropriations, with contact information, is here: http://apro.assembly.ca.gov/membersstaff
(Assemblyman Curt Hagman (R) was the sole member of the Committee on Business, Professions and Consumer Protection to vote against passing the bill to Appropriations; those voting aye were Michael Allen (D), Bill Berryhill (R), Betsy Butler (D), Mike Eng (D), Mary Hayashi (D), Jerry Hill (D), Fiona Ma (D) and Cameron Smyth (R).)
