Highway Worker Safety Regulations
There are new Highway Worker Safety Regulations concerning worker visibility in workzones that are
coming on-line in November.
Please
visit these websites for more information:
FHWA's Office of Safety: http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/index.htm
The Work Zone
Safety Clearinghouse at Texas A&M University: http://wzsafety.tamu.edu/
The American
Traffic Safety Services Association: http://www.atssa.com/
Be sure to visit this page for details on
the new safety vest requirements: http://www.occunomix.com/anshv.html
American
National Standard For High-Visibility Safety Apparel- ANSI/ISEA 107-1999
American National Standard For High-Visibility Safety Apparel-
ANSI (American National
Standards Institute)/ISEA (International Safety Equipment Association) 107-1999
Road construction, railway and utility workers; law enforcement and emergency
response personnel; survey and airport ground crews and others are routinely exposed to the hazards of low visibility on the
job. Now they can be assured of being seen, both day and night, if they wear apparel that conforms to a newly-published American
National Standard from ISEA, The International Safety Equipment Association.
Until the publication of this document, there was no uniform, authoritative guide
for the design, performance specifications, and use of high visibility and reflective apparel including vests, jackets, bib/jumpsuit
coveralls, trousers and harnesses. Garments that meet this standard can be worn 24 hours a day to provide users with a high
level of conspicuity through the use of combined fluorescent and retroreflective materials.
The standard specifies three conspicuity classes
of garments based on wearer's activities:
Class 3 garments
provide the highest level of conspicuity where traffic exceeds 50 mph and are intended for workers who face serious hazards
where weather, work or other factors impair visibility or often have high task loads that require attention away from their
work. The standard recommends these garments for all roadway construction personnel, flaggers, and vehicle operators, utility
workers, survey crews, emergency responders, railway workers, accident site investigators, and emergency response.
Class 2 garments are intended for users during activities that need greater visibility
in inclement weather conditions, or who perform tasks that divert their attention from appoaching traffic, whose work environments
that have risks that exceed those for Class 1 and whose activities occur near roadways where traffic speeds exceed 25 mph
but less than 50 mph. Workers who would wear this class of garment include railway workers, school crossing guards, high volume
parking and toll gate personnel, delivery vehicle drivers, airport baggage handlers, ground crew, trash collection and recycling
operations, ship cargo loading operations, forestry operations, roadway construction, utility, and emergency response and
law enforcement personnel.
Class 1 garments may be suitable for workers not
directly in vehicle traffic paths and where vehicle speeds do not exceed 25 mph. Class 1 is suitable when workers' activities
permit their full attention to approaching traffic. Parking service attendants, workers in warehouses with equipment traffic,
shopping cart retrievers, sidewalk maintenance workers, and delivery vehicle drivers may wear this class of garment if above
criteria are met.
This
page has good examples of vests that need to be replaced: http://www.atssa.com/galleries/rsti/Brochure%20on%20Decommissioning%20High%20Visibility%20Apparel%20-%20FINAL%20for%20Printing%200308.pdf (This is a 2 Mb .pdf file... so I didn't attach it to this e-mail.)
There are also new standards on Traffic Sign Retro-Reflectivity that you need to be aware of. Please
visit this page for more details: http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/retro/index.htm
