Wow... I'm very sorry to hear about what happened. I hope everything turns out ok.
I'm a big advocate of lsaer safety and have made many posts on it in the past (on other forums). What I really think is nessessary is some documentation included with every laser indicating the potential dangers and safe use of the device.
As for legality etc. 5-point safety features do not make it legal. These safety features are required for public use in... for example a club. However in your own home, a laser does not have to have any form of safety feature to be legal. When used outdoors, it's most likely not legal to shine any high powered laser around (safety features or not).
I have seen someone look into a laser device that had the 5-star safety because they thought it was broken. Lucky they looked away in time as the beam then turned on, due to the few second delay. Without proper documentation, this can be even more dangerous then a laser without a delay.
I have seen documentaion describing how to insert batteries, turn the device on etc... but as of yet generally no documentation on the safety aspect.
There's also those who insist that a 5mW laser is safe. This is not true. I have focused one enough that it made a tiny hole in a very thin plastic material. The membrane in an eye is just as delicate or even more so!
The accidents that occur with lasers are generally very easily avoided. I believe that it really comes down to the lack of danger awareness due to lack of included documentation. There's plenty of laser danger threads listed throughout the various forums, but documentation provided with the laser would allow everyone that purchased one immediate access to the information.
