How to keep people a safe distance from moving vehicles on site

Thursday, 10 October 2019 ( #944 )

Keep people and vehicles apart

Over the last few months several deaths and injuries have been reported in Australia. Organisations such as Work Safe have been working hard to improve safety on site and bring about more stringent guidelines and accountability for employers and their staff. However, accidents involving pedestrian staff and moving vehicles and mobile plant are still occurring. One of the best ways to minimise or eliminate accidents involving moving vehicles and people is to keep them a safe distance away.

Unfortunately, this is not as simple as it sounds. Many current safety rules and policies that attempt to keep people a safe distance from moving vehicles and mobile plant are not effective. These safety processes often rely on human factors including compliance with safety rules, exercising good safety judgement and applying safe working behaviour.

It only takes a moment of inattention or non-compliance with safety directives to cause someone to get too close to a moving vehicle and risk being injured or killed as a result of interaction with the machinery. Some safety initiatives (like barriers, instructions to stay a certain distance from vehicles and red/blue lights shining on the ground) are still prone to reliance on human factors mentioned above and therefore increase risk of someone getting too close.

In addition to these human factors the environmental conditions often add further risk. Many vehicles have blind spots, typical site layouts may involve aisles or concealed doorways where people can be lurking and not seen by a vehicle operator until it is too late.

These issues that make it difficult to keep your people a safe distance away from moving vehicles and mobile plant. What can be done to keep your vehicles and pedestrian staff apart without such reliance on human judgement and behaviour and can also work in poor visibility or high-risk areas?

Keep pedestrians a safe distance from mobile plant

BodyGuard Safety Solutions have developed a solution called "BodyGuard i-Tag" that does help to keep your people a safe distance away from moving vehicles and mobile plant.

The BodyGuard i-Tag system is an electronic control type of safety system that gets fitted to your vehicles or mobile plant. The system establishes a 360-degree safety exclusion zone around the vehicle.

Pedestrian staff wear a small lightweight device (called a "Tag") on a lanyard. When any person who is wearing a Tag breaches the safety exclusion zone around the vehicle, an Alarm in immediately activated to provide an unmistakably clear warning for the driver (Human voice warning as well as high brightness visible alarm) and the pedestrian's Tag will vibrate.

In addition to providing an immediate alarm, BodyGuard i-Tag helps personnel improve their judgement of safe distances to vehicles or mobile plant, improving their safety judgement (Every time the safety exclusion zone is breached, and warning is activated, both driver and pedestrian can see how far they need to be apart). It is one thing for people to be told to keep a set distance from each other but how do they judge whether they are in fact a safe distance away. Because different vehicles or plant may have different risk factors, the safety exclusion zone size can be adjusted to suit the perceived risk and personnel learn safe distances around various machinery items.

The BodyGuard system does not interfere with normal work flow or slow it down. Unless a breach of the safety exclusion zone around the vehicle or plant is detected, the driver can operate the vehicle without being the system interfering with their operation.

The BodyGuard Tags will operate in conjunction with any vehicle that has the BodyGuard system installed, there is no need to program the tags to any specific vehicle. If any tag breaches the safety exclusion zone, then the alarm activates to warn both the driver and pedestrian. This means the BodyGuard pedestrian safety warning system is universal. Multiple companies can be working together on a project and any company that has BodyGuard fitted to their vehicles will detect Tags breaching the safety exclusion zone from both their own personnel as well as those from any other company wearing a BodyGuard Tag.

Person to plant segregation

The great thing about the BodyGuard system is that Tags can be detected through solid objects and around corners, the alarm is activated when a person gets too close to the vehicle even if they are out of sight, buried in a cloud of dust or moving around a corner.

The BodyGuard system is easy to install and operate. The quick install kit option enables the system devices to magnetically attach to the vehicle (especially useful for leased/rented vehicles).

The system operates from 12 or 24V DC supplied from the vehicle electrical system (higher voltages supported using our voltage reducer device). The connection of power from the vehicle to the BodyGuard system is the only part of the installation that requires a maintenance person or auto-electrician.

BodyGuard Safety Solutions is 100% Australian owned and operated. We design, manufacture and supply all BodyGuard Pedestrian Safety Warning systems here in Australia - resulting in proficient and high levels of technical support direct from the designer/manufacturer.

The focus of our design and continual improvement over the years has been to make the system very good at just one thing - to provide an unmistakably clear warning to both the driver and pedestrian when they get too close to each other.

Contact us today to see how we can make your workplace safer by keeping your people a safe distance from your moving vehicles and mobile plant.