The wheels spin at over 10,000 RPM - that is 166.666 revolutions each second. You build up a lot of force on the wheel and if something happens to it - a nick or a defect in manufacture - shit hits the fan in a fraction of a second.
The person in this picture is very lucky that it hit his safety glasses and that they were good glasses. A lot of the cheaper ones (Harbor Freight) are crap and will shatter. If this had hit his cheek, it would have torn the skin down to the bone.
That being said, I have never had a wheel come apart like this in 14 years of using them. Still, it is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when so I suit up every time I fire one of these puppies up. I am also very aware of the position of the tool relative to my body and where the angular momentum will go if the disk fails. Situational awareness is a good thing.
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