Tear away light emulating light reflecting safety vest/poncho
A tear away light emulating—light reflective safety vest/poncho with self contained battery pack. Vest/Poncho utilizes electrical carrying magnets/snaps/catches or any separatable device that has the ability to transfer and conduct electricity to other panels of a vest/poncho to energize the light emulating articles/devices such as LED lights, Fiber Optics and glowing materials to allow for tear away sections without the destruction of the vest/poncho. Front and back of vest has indicia that differentiates one from the other.
This application claims priority to provisional patent application No. 61/342,285 filed Apr. 9, 2010
TECHNICAL FIELDThis invention relates to the field of safety vests/ponchos for the construction, police, fire rescue, sport and any endeavor that would require the ability to garner attention either at night or even during the day for safety purposes. This invention relates to a tear away vest/poncho that can be ripped away from the person's body without dragging them should they get caught on a moving vehicle or any equipment that could catch the vest/poncho and pull the wearer into a harmful situation. This invention relates to a tear away vest/poncho with LED lights. This invention relates to the ability to transfer electricity for the LED lights across this tear away section and to other panels of the vest/poncho without the use of hard wiring.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONCurrently there are many high visibility safety vest/poncho's in the marketplace. The majority of these vests are made of a nylon material with some reflective cloth sewn into the vest. The object of these vests is to catch the light from a vehicle's headlights and become much more visible due to the reaction of the reflective cloth. The problem is they are only more highly visible when the headlights hit them. There are situations when the angle of the headlights or if it is a motorcycle that the beams are not in the optimum position to reflect the cloth. When this happens the driver of these vehicles may not have enough time to respond or maneuver his vehicle out of the way. With the advent of LED & fiber optic lighting it is now possible to wear light emulating articles/devices upon the vest/poncho and have a much longer viewing range than that of just reflector cloth. By having light emulating articles/devices you now need wiring and electricity to energize them, this causes a problem for the tear away vest/poncho because you would need wiring to go around the vest/poncho to multiple panels to light the light emulating articles/devices.
The present invention is provided to solve the problems discussed above and other problems, and to provide advantages and aspects not provided by prior safety vest/poncho's of this type. A full discussion of the features and advantages of the present invention is deferred to the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONThe present invention solves all the problems of the prior method by combining light sensitive reflective material and light emulating articles/devices.
- In an embodiment the vest/poncho has hook and loop tear away areas.
- In an embodiment the vest/poncho has a pocket for signage of person using it.
- In an embodiment the vest/poncho has magnets/snaps or other catches that are capable of transferring electricity through it to power light emulating articles/devices.
- In an embodiment the vest/poncho has a battery power supply.
- In an embodiment the vest/poncho has a high visibility mesh material for part of its material.
- In an embodiment the vest/poncho has light emulating articles/devices that either blink or have a constant glow.
- In an embodiment the vest/poncho has indicia on both the front and back, this indicia is distinctively different from each other so one could easily tell them apart and determine if a person wearing this vest/poncho was facing them or their back was to them.
Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following specification taken in conjunction with the following drawings.
To understand the present invention, it will now be described by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which;
While this invention is susceptible of embodiments in many different forms, there is shown in the drawings and will herein be described in detail preferred embodiments of the invention with the understanding that the present disclosure is to be considered as an exemplification of the principles of the invention and is not intended to limit the broad aspect of the invention to the embodiments illustrated.
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While the specific embodiments have been illustrated and described, numerous modifications come to mind without significantly departing from the spirit of the invention and the scope of protection is only limited by the scope of the accompanying Claims.
Claims
1. A safety vest comprising:
- a front panel;
- a rear panel attached to the front panel at a tear away section provided by a shoulder strap & hip strap;
- light emulating devices embedded in the front and rear panels;
- strips of reflective cloth disposed on the front and rear panels in association with the light emulating devices;
- a power source attached to the vest and powering the light emulating devices
- a first indicia provided by the front panel and a second indicia provided on the back panel being distinctively different from the front panel indicia; and
- a tear away section exposing an electrical conducting magnet located on a shoulder strap under the tear away section.
Type: Application
Filed: Apr 18, 2011
Publication Date: Oct 18, 2012
Inventors: Ronald Reda (Orland Park, IL), Peter Haak (Chicago, IL), Tao Xu (Naperville, IL)
Application Number: 13/066,524