I hate to say it, but anyone who uses any power tool is a ????ed idiot if they dont wear eye protection. Its not the routine things that you expect that get you, its the mishaps, and it will occur in the blink of an eye. Eyes are very easily damaged, and not easily repaired. When an eye is penetrated, you can become blinded by sympathetic opthalmia , in BOTH eyes, not just the one injured. And it can occcur up to 50 yrs later. You can spend the rest of your life wondering if you will go blind some day.
This occurs because material from inside the eye wall is introduced into the interior, the body doesnt recognize it and attacks it, an autoimmune disfunction. Only it attacks both eyes. Many famous persons throughout history became blind this way, as many as 25% of eye injuries during the civil war resulted in blindness due to this too.
Infection greatly increases the risk, so with todays antibiotics risk is minimized, but still there. The only sure way to prevent it is to remove the damaged eye within a couple of days, but thats not what you want to do if it can be saved. So you are left with the choice of trying to keep both eyes and risk blindness , or give up the damaged one.
Yes I have 1 eye left.