EN ISO 20471:2013
High visibility clothing for professional use
Interventions on the road occur much more frequently than fire interventions. To accomplish those tasks in safety, you need high visibility clothing. This type of garment will warn car drivers that you are on the road. Especially in assembly environments high visibility clothing can save lives. For example, when the weather is bad combined with road markings, lights of other vehicles, wet road surfaces, etc.
The brigades’ risk assessment demands that their intervention gear complies with the EN ISO 20471:2013 standard. There are two options to comply with this standard. First, making an EN 469 suit that is also in accordance with EN ISO 20471:2013. Second, you can wear an EN ISO 20471:2013 class 2 jacket.
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The EN ISO 20471 standard specifies the letter X: 3 classes for the garment
The standard defines 3 colours: yellow, orange and red. The characteristics of protective clothing with high visibility are stated in the EN 20471:2013 standard.
Class 3 Class 2 Class 1 Basic material (fluorescent) 0.80m² 0.50m² 0.14m² Retro-reflective material 0.20m² 0.13m² 0.10m² Material with combined characteristics 0.20m² The basic material must wrap the body and has a minimum width of 50 mm over the full length.
Sioen was the first to put a high visibility firefighter jacket on the market. Today, we still manage to make the positioning of the striping even more effective. Our Siotec department has already created and certified hundreds of different models.
Fluorescent vs retro-reflective
The fluorescent materials can be yellow, reddish-orange or red. It depends on the environment because you want to create a large contrast. They react with the UV of light and guarantee better visibility during the day. They don’t improve visibility at night.
The retro-reflective striping sends the light back to its source. They only improve the visibility of firemen at night by reflecting the lights of cars or other vehicles.
Type of retro-reflective stripings
There are 2 technologies for the retro-reflective stripings :
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The glass beads technology
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The micro-prism technology
