About Safety Vests
A safety vest is a necessary piece of safety gear for many outdoor workers, from construction workers to public safety workers. However, as of 2006, different standards exist for police traffic safety vests and highway or construction safety vests. As all safety vests meeting ANSI standards need to be a reflective safety vest model, the amount of background material and size of the retroreflective material varies with ANSI/ISEA 107-2004 class 1, 2, and 3 and ANSI/ISEA 207-2006. As all outdoor workers need some protection to be visible for motorists in both day and night times, protection from a safety vest is necessary, whether the garment is strong enough as a DOT or traffic safety vest or as a construction class 3 safety vest for night time workers.
ANSI/ISEA 107-2004 is the latest regulation for safety vests, with the previous regulation update being 1999. While ANSI regulations don’t specify which type of workers need ANSI 107 vests, the standards give specifics about the amount of material needed for each class of safety vest. Class 3 safety vests, the brightest vests that could be highway safety vests for night time outdoor workers, require that the background material be 1240 square inches and the retroreflective tape be 310 square inches. Each strip of retroreflective material on a class 3 safety vest should have a width of two inches and no more than 4.3 yards of the two-inch reflective material can be used per vest. Class 2 vests have a smaller design, with background material requirements no more than 775 square inches and reflective material requirements no more than 201 square inches. The reflective tape on a class 2 safety vest should have a width of 1.375 inches and no more than 4 yards can be used per vest, although if the width of the reflective material is two inches for a class 2 vest, only 2.8 yards can be used. The smallest vest, a class 1 safety vest, can be no larger than 217 square inches, with 155 square inches of reflective material or 310 total square inches. Reflective material can have a width of one or two inches, with 4.3 yards allowed for one inch wide material, 3.1 yards allowed for 1.372 inch material, and 2.15 yards allowed for two inch wide reflective strips. Similarly, ANSI 107-2004 has regulations for class E full-body safety suits.
The standards for public safety vests were developed more recently for outdoor public safety workers and, as a result, DOT and police traffic safety vests have a different set of standards that fall in between ANSI/ISEA 107-2004 class 1 and 2 standards. These safety vests need to have flexibility for designs, with space as a safety vest with pockets, equipment belts, colored panels for identification, and shoulder devices. A reflective safety vest meeting the ANSI 207-2006 should have fluorescent background material not exceeding 450 square inches, with retroreflective material no more than 201 square inches – the same as a class 2 reflective safety vest. However, although these public safety vests seem very similar to ANSI 107 class 2 vests, they are not interchangeable or replaceable with each other; public safety workers’ safety vests must follow 207-2006 requirements and safety vests designed for construction and other industrial workers must follow 107-2004 standards.
