I’ve mentioned this before, but when I worked at Rockler we would hear, and see, stories of wood shop injuries regularly. The router, which most people consider less dangerous than say the table saw, was notorious for taking fingers from people who misused it. Spinning at 22,000 RPMs doesn’t take long to cause a lot of injury. We saw a number of people with router injuries. One guy dropped his handheld router while it was running and tried to grab it before it hit the floor. It was not a good thing to do.
The most common story, however, involved contractors who would remove the safety guard from everything they used, like table saws, so that they could complete their job quicker or so they said.
Many a contractor company owner talked about his “workmen’s comp” costs because of this.
One guy came in with two fingers of his left hand missing. He wanted to buy a Sawstop for “his boys” because the Jet tables saw he owned was responsible for his accident. It is always the saws fault somehow. I was happy to sell him a Sawstop though. Hopefully, he’ll just have to buy a replacement blade the next time he’s careless.
In any case, I’m very glad you’re ok and the accident wasn’t much worse. I also hope others learn from the experience.