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BBC Radio 4 - Reflections on Hi-Vis

Safety essential, petty authority, fashion? Steph McGovern on the many ways to see hi-vis.

Chances are you’ve come across a person in hi-vis at least once today. It’s become an omnipresent feature of British culture. Steph McGovern explores its history and role today.

Chances are at some point today you’ve come across someone wearing a hi-vis vest or jacket - seeing a cyclist, accepting a delivery, passing a construction site, watching a protest on TV, being told you “can’t park there” or glancing across the dance floor at the weekend’s rave. People wear it for a variety of reasons - safety, status, security, solidarity. 

In Reflections on Hi-Vis, Steph McGovern asks why a safety item has become so ubiquitous. What does that say about us? Are we more safety conscious? Or has the day-glo uniform come to signify authority in all its forms? After all, no event is complete without a fluorescent-clad army pointing and directing. Politicians never miss an opportunity to appear on TV in a hard hat and a glowing jacket. In France, hi-vis came to symbolise a whole protest movement – the eponymous Gilets Jaunes. 

Ironically hi-vis was born out of an industrial accident. Student Bob Switzer had a summer job unloading trays of tomatoes at a Californian Heinz Factory. In 1933 he fell, suffering a skull fracture, severed his optic nerve and was instructed to lie in a dark room until he recovered his eyesight. Six months recuperating in a darkened cellar below the family pharmacy led Bob and his brother Joe (a chemistry student and amateur magician) to develop a fluorescent paint for Joe’s magic shows. When Bob tested the day-glo paint on swatches of his wife’s wedding dress, the hi-vis jacket was born.

Hi-vis arrived in the UK 30 years later when Glasgow track workers trialled the fluorescent jackets (or ‘fire-flies’).  Many were reluctant to wear the unflattering garb. Retired linesman Jimmy Gillies recalls the scepticism of colleagues. Only when hi-vis became required on building sites, were the dazzling jackets willingly donned. 

There are diversions into policing, rave culture, political photo ops, cycling and safety on construction sites. What’s the significance and potential of hi-vis and is it here to stay?

Reflections courtesy of Jimmy Gillies, Juliet Elliot, Dr Mike Esbester, Kerri Layton, Rod Liddle, Bénédicte Paviot, Professor Clifford Stott, Millsy, Lou and Daz, Debs Southernwood and Stefan Rousseau.

Produced by Alexandra Quinn.
Executive Producer: Andrew Smith.
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

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