What You Should Know About High Visibility Safety Workwear

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High-visibility workwear is safety apparel for the employees working in a hazardous environment. Read this guide and learn everything about high-vis apparel.

If your employees work in dangerous conditions, they will most likely require high-visibility workwear. Working on a construction site or handling heavy equipment may expose them to danger. So, safety wearing clothing on the job is vital to protect your staff. This is the place to learn everything there is to know about it. This post will explain what hi-vis is, why you need it, and who should wear it. Plus, we'll go over how to wear and care for it. And finally, we will discuss different styles of hi-vis clothes. All these things will help you choose what is best for you.

What is High-Visibility Workwear?

Hi-vis is a type of personal protective equipment that has highly reflecting qualities. That helps lowers the risk of workers' injury or fatality. As it allows motorists and equipment operators to see employees in low-light or dark conditions. Our eyes respond best to objects that are huge, contrasting, or brilliant. As a result, the significant color contrast between hi-vis clothes and the surroundings workers' appearance.

What is the Need for Hi-Vis Safety Coveralls?

The whole objective of wearing high-visibility apparel is to stand out. However, there are several alternatives. High safety visibility clothing is more complicated than you might believe. They're more than just a vivid hue or a silver strip.

Any industry that involves moving machinery requires safety clothing to protect workers from low-light situations. People in the construction and highway maintenance industries appreciate the need of keeping workers safe and protected against visibility-related dangers.

So, if you are working around machines or vehicles, don't put your life in danger, wear safety apparel. Simply put, if you are not visible while working, you are not safe, and you require hi-vis clothes. When road workers fail to consider how apparently they are to those around them, there are greater chances of injuries.

How Do Safety Apparel Reduce Accidents?

Sunlight, adjacent lights, car headlights, or job site lighting strikes the reflecting stripes and bands on the clothes. In turn, gives it a glowing or dazzling effect. Retro-reflective glass beads technology used in the safety gear aids light to reflect back to the source. This means that light emitted by a car will reflect right back to the driver. Resultantly, oncoming traffic, employees, and bystanders can recognize workers due to the reflected light. And then they do their part to avoid a workplace accident.

Who Uses Hi-Vis Clothing?

Construction, maintenance, utility, and emergency response workers all wear high-vis clothes. This is because they are frequently exposed to hazards that need their visibility to others. To avoid an accident, a crane operator must know where his colleagues are. People traveling alongside the highway can see maintenance personnel if they wear reflective gear.

High-vis apparel is also useful for recreational activities. Reflective vests and bright shirts or shorts help to make the roadrunners and cyclists visible to oncoming vehicles. The bright orange color helps hunters identify each other. It is a color that game animals cannot see.

Is It Mandatory?

Working on highways or around big machinery is very hazardous. The CDC reports that fatal work-related injuries at road construction sites kill an average of 123 workers per year. In 2019, there were 762 fatal crashes, with 842 people killed. These data only cover deaths. They do not even begin to cover workers and citizens who were hurt in work zones or by machines.

Therefore, high-vis apparel is essential. It saves the danger of on-the-job accidents. The Federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices 2009 requires highway maintenance and road construction employees to wear high vis clothes.

Other sectors are not compelled by law to require hi-vis attire for their employees. But if they do so. It will improve workplace safety. Other inclusions are aircraft, warehousing, and electric power transmission, to name a few.

What are the Different Classes of High-Vis Workwear?

Safety apparel classifies clothing into three categories based on the amount of body coverage given. According to the minimal body coverage regions, each class covers the torso (waist to the neck) and limbs.

Class 1 has the least recognized coverage and the best clarity.

Class 2 offers moderate body coverage and an excellent appearance.

Class 3 gives the most body coverage and appearance in low light and from a long distance.

How Can You Store Your Safety Apparel?

Make sure to keep your work clothes in a dry, clean place. So, they do not damage. Hanging is the ideal way to store HVSA while not in use. Because it keeps the reflective tape in the greatest shape.

If your company maintains employees' PPE, make sure someone has the duty for storage. Along with wear and tear checks, maintenance, and cleaning. HVSA is an important aspect of workers' safety. Therefore, inspection and maintenance of hi-vis clothes are as serious as maintaining buildings and heavy machinery.

Companies should give a designated closet, cupboard, or room for HVSA storage. Ensure that your personnel must know proper storage rules. Because proper storage will increase employee safety. In addition to this, it will also save you money in the long run. Since you wouldn't need to replace well-maintained workwear regularly.

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