The Ultimate Performance Of Safety Vests
On average, a pedestrian is struck by a motor vehicle someplace in the world every 8 minutes. 5,600 people are wiped out each year by vehicles and another 80,000 are injured - many of them while crossing streets or intersections. Nonetheless, only a tiny proportion of these cases are people who spend much of their time near moving vehicles: road workers.
And this is due largely in part to the simple implementation of safety vests. Safety vests are simply light weight vests worn over normal clothing, with bright fluorescent colors such as orange or yellow, and frequently with specially designed reflective strips - all developed to make the wearer as visible to the human eye as humanly possible in as many circumstances and environments as possible. The first part of safety vests making them visible is simply their color.
To get a high amount of visibility, it's clear to go for brighter colors like orange and yellow, but there's some other reasons behind these alternatives. The backgrounds in which a wearer operates are important. On open highways for example, the vests worn by road workers are usually a vibrant orange to contrast with the two most primarily abundant colors: the dark green of trees or landscape beside the road, or the blue sky. Orange in particular is a complimentary color of blue - that is, its specific opposite on the color spectrum, making for the very best contrast in between the two colors, and as a result, the greatest visibility.
This is the same explanation why many signs and signals warning of construction or obstacles ahead are painted in the same color. The color yellow, and most of its related shades and colorings are most likely to remain steady between those suffering from various kinds of color blindness. These supplies for protection come in all different types, shapes, and of course sizes. The reflective strips found on safety vests are also the product of much research.
These are constructed of retroreflectors, which reflect light with small dispersal back toward their source. However, unlike a mirror, retroreflectors can reflect light back in the direction of the source from an angle of incidence much greater than zero - meaning, the device doesn't need to be pointed directly at the light source in order to reflect light back toward it, contrary to a mirror which must be positioned flawlessly perpendicularly.
This really is typically achieve by arranging three mutually perpendicular mirrors to create a corner, much like three touching sides of a cube. This geometrical alignment enables light to be reflected in the direction of its source from any direction. Needless to say in the application of clothing, the "mirrors" in question are extremely tiny and made of reflective fibers or scotchlite, a material made of millions of tiny glass beads with a steel reflective surface painted on one surface.
Together, these two easy applications drastically increase the visibility of those wearing safety vests, subsequently making their presence much more apparent and greatly reducing the risk of an automobile accident.
About the Author
By Paul Wise who often uses vests for safety and therefore recommends http://www.wipermaster.com/safety_vests.php
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