As someone who has accidentally removed part of their finger by getting it trapped in the pinch point of a belt sander, ouch. Yes, this is exactly the same arrangement, and I can see it causing very severe injuries very quickly.

I don’t think this is exactly the same arrangement - the belt goes “all the way around” on this where the pinch point is between the belt and the ground rather than the belt and the internals of the sander.

Here the force is the weight of the peloton unit, rather than the motor pulling you into a fixed width gap.

Shitty diagram to show what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/TstPxtb

The belt on the peloton doesn’t go inside the device, it runs fully on the outside all the way around and underneath.

That was my point, applying pressure to the object held against a belt sander is how you remove material. Those slats probably have some kind of tread on them which makes this a 500W, couple hundred pound belt sander capable of flaying small pets and children. If you have a strong stomach you can look up “belt sander injuries” to get an idea of what I’m talking about.