Wear Your Light Wherever You Go

Imagine this. Your road crew is doing a single-lane shutdown at night. Someone drives past your jobsite, pulls over and walks back to the flagger, asking to speak to the site manager. What do you think he might say?

“He told the site manager that he could see the entire crew due to their Halo Lights,” ILLUMAGEAR CEO Max Baker said. ILLUMAGEAR’s Halo Light is a personal active safety system that produces a ring of light around the wearer, allowing him to see and be seen in all directions, at all times.

“The Halo Lights had such a positive impact on [that driver] that he had to come back and tell someone,” Baker said. “We hear a new story like this almost every week.”

For example, one construction crew in southern California was hesitant to try the Halo Light, “but now their teams refuse to go out on the jobsite without it.”

Baker developed the Halo Light while working as a construction laborer and manager for eight years.

“Vehicles and equipment are actively illuminated, but workers had to rely on reflective gear,” he said. So, he invented a safety light that can be worn, like a halo, over any hardhat and weighs little more than current headlamps. “Unlike standard reflective gear, the Halo Light actively illuminates the worker—it doesn’t rely on a secondary source of light to light up the worker.”

Because it’s both portable and personal, the Halo Light also floods the worker’s local task area with light in all directions without shadows.

“Besides improved safety and visibility, we have case studies that show both improved worker efficiency and reduced on-the-job injuries,” Baker said. For example, IGEL Construction has noticed a 100 percent reduction in jobsite hand cuts by mechanics using the Halo Light at night, and RQ Construction benefitted from improved quality in workmanship, resulting in less rework, due to increased visibility.
Each unit lasts for more than 12 hours on a single charge, and it takes five and a half hours to recharge a fully depleted unit. ILLUMAGEAR recommends developing a system to ensure your crews can easily use their Halo Light on every night job and works with teams to assist with rollouts.

For example, Halo Lights can be charged during the day in the job shack, often using the ILLUMAGEAR Field Locker, which can be transported in the foreman’s truck to pass out the units before the night shift. At the end of the night shift, the foreman will collect the Halos to recharge them.

“In other instances, we’ve seen workers purchase the Halo Light themselves,” Baker said. “In those cases, they bring the tool with them to the jobsite and recharge it at home using the ILLUMAGEAR wall charger.”

The Halo Light can be worn over any hardhat and weighs little more than current headlamps.

Although the Halo Light was built for construction, it’s also been used by miners, truckers, refinery workers, electricians, utility workers, longshoremen, rail road crews, crane crews, logistic companies and even crossing guards.

“We’ve also seen the Halo Light used by a few firemen and even by ordinary people walking their dog or working around their property at night,” Baker said.

So far, more than 7,000 units have been deployed on U.S. jobsites. In 2016, ILLUMAGEAR hopes to develop additional products to address its customers’ top four requests.

The Halo Light has also won 17 awards for safety innovation and product design, from groups including the American Traffic Safety Services Association, American Road & Transportation Builders Association and the Construction Innovation Forum.

“Each [safety story] we hear motivates our team, as our mission is to get everyone home safe to their families,” Baker said.