Granite Explains - To Tear Apart Or Not To Tear Apart Workwear

Why do operatives that work on the rail (specifically on or within 1.5 meters of the rail line) have to wear tear apart high visibility vests, tear-off hoods and tear apart back-packs when this is not a requirement within any other industry?

(note that this generally does not apply to buildings and infrastructure further than 1.5 meters away from the rail).

The requirement for the high visibility mini vest to have pull apart fastenings was included in GORT3279 issue 1 in December 1994 and continued to be shown up to and including issue 6. The requirement was removed from issue 7 in December 2012. The briefing note for that revision in the key changes section says that clause B.6.1 fasteners was withdrawn because it duplicated legislation, Schedule 2, Annex II of the PPE Directive – Directive 89/686/EEC.

For all of those of you falling asleep already this directive stated:

2.5 . PPE which may be caught up during use
Where the foreseeable conditions of use include in particular the risk of the PPE being caught up by a moving object thereby creating a danger for the user, the PPE must possess an appropriate resistance threshold above which a constituent part will break and eliminate the danger.

For technical reasons RSSB (Rail Safety and Standards Board) has removed the / from the title of their standards so GO/RT3279 has become GORT3279. Helpfully if you try searching in the standards section of the web site with the / included it will not find the document you are looking for.

Anecdotally:
The usage of tear-apart mini-vests appears to have been mandated in the 80’s specifically for shunting operatives where there was an increased chance of snagging working closer around slow to medium speed vehicles. This appears to have been generally adopted by the industry and applied to hooded garments and back-packs. Possibly through mass inclusions to risk assessments.
It is probably a legacy standard adopted by the industry unknowingly and the business that tries to work on or near the track in non-tear-apart vests, hoods, backpacks will have an interesting conversation with the specified Health & Safety manager.

Note: The RSSB website is an excellent ‘go-to’ resource for those seeking clarification on rail related issues, standards and for those that suffer from severe insomnia.

This information is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication – August 2016.