Every job that uses heavy equipment juggles productivity and safety. You can’t afford to take chances with worker wellness, but some safety measures can add pressure when project timelines are tight. The solution? Safety measures that can actually enhance worker productivity while also keeping them safe – and modern heavy equipment lighting combines the best of both worlds.
Emerging lighting technologies that keep workers safe
Bright, efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs) on heavy equipment have become the leading way to enhance visibility on worksites – and the features of well-optimized LEDs go far beyond adding light to dark areas. These are just a few types of lights that can improve safety and visibility on jobsites:
- LED danger zone lights like the J.W. Speaker Model 777 highlight unsafe areas around a vehicle or piece of machinery, clearly displaying colourful no-go zones on the ground and showing workers and other vehicles where it’s not safe to walk or drive. These LED lights can even be customized to display warning symbols to provide direct instruction to workers, rather than simply illuminating an area.
- LED work lights like the J.W. Speaker Model 526 can toggle between different colour temperatures, which is critical for visibility in conditions that affect line of sight. In dark conditions where brightness is paramount, for example, it can display a standard bright white to place light where it’s needed; and in dusty or foggy conditions, a warm white light cuts through to illuminate the path ahead.
- Sensors in LED work lights can even help operators see over hills and other terrain. By selectively illuminating individual diodes in the light’s array, they can shine in a downward direction as the equipment crests the hill, illuminating the terrain on the other side of the hill instead of shining upward in the direction the equipment is facing. It works the other way, too: if a piece of equipment is moving down a hill, LEDs can shine upward out of the ditch to throw light into the vehicle’s path and illuminate terrain and obstacles.
- LED roof bars and strobe lights shine brighter and use less energy, with multiple strobe settings and colour temperatures to provide heavy equipment visibility from every angle. The J.W. Speaker Model 538 LED strobe can light up red or green to remind the driver to buckle up before hitting the acceleration, and the Model 529 LED Big Stripe casts a safety strip of light that creates a highly visible keep-out zone to keep workers and other vehicles at a safe distance on any jobsite.
Why today’s worksites need smarter heavy equipment lighting
In the past, work safety lights – typically halogen bulbs – were made to just fill an area in front of a vehicle with light or stuck on the side of a vehicle to make it as visible as possible. That was helpful for reducing accidents caused by things you can’t see while in a vehicle – especially on the third shift, underground, or wherever visibility is tough. But it also led to alarm fatigue, which desensitizes workers to the din of attention-grabbing beams, beacons, and beeps they’re exposed to during shift, which can actually increase accident rates.
But the reality is that work vehicles do a lot more than move forward and backward. They have swinging crane arms, front-loading forks, and other tools that can create danger zones around them for yards.
Today, heavy equipment lighting doesn’t have to just illuminate what’s around you. It can enable communication between workers that prevents accidents, reduces downtime, and improves the comfort and satisfaction of your team. Whether it’s on a construction site, mining rig or a drilling pad, LEDs and sensors can easily replace halogen lights and integrate into vehicle design to make equipment, workers, and jobsites safer – all without interrupting productivity.
Illuminating the future of worksite safety
Of course, better tools don’t automatically mean better safety. Every safety solution needs to be part of a larger commitment to safety, and heavy equipment LEDs make it easier to create a safe jobsite that doesn’t hold workers back from doing what they do best.
From OEMs designing a new vehicle or a crew leader upgrading from halogen, anyone who uses heavy equipment needs a partner who knows the hazards of the jobsite. With decades of experience designing and manufacturing vehicle lighting solutions in major industries, J.W. Speaker creates the lighting solutions of tomorrow – and we never stop innovating to anticipate what today’s equipment needs to work better, brighter and safer on the job.
Article source: J.W. Speaker Corporation
https://www.jwspeaker.com/blog/heavy-equipment-lights-worksite-safety/
