Hi Viz Culture
It seems that H-Viz Culture is really taking off with an offender reparation scheme "Community Payback" which is forcing offenders to wear hi-viz clothing to let everyone know they are criminals. See here for more details.
Given the penchant for hoodies in the USA and, peculiarly, in some parts of the UK to roll up one trouser leg to symbolise that they have been on a chain gang combined with the popularity of low cut-butt-revealing jeans modelled on belt-less falling-down prison garb - it will not be long now before anti-social types (besides violent Wigan Police Officers) will be wearing police-style hi viz jackets as a form of post-modern sardonic irony.
This will prove interesting.
In the past, bobbies uniforms were unique and anyone wearing one - or something very similar - who was not "police" seriously risked being charged with impersonating a police officer. But what will happen now?
Actually, it might not be all bad news. Because when it happens perhaps the criminals won't know anymore whether the person they can see approaching them from half a mile away is a police officer or a fellow delinquent.
Remember you read it on Bent Society first.
Robin
2 comments:
Apart from the sentiment of the piece which I entirely agree with, the police, councils, etc... are falling into a trap that many places in the petrochemical industry have fallen into.
In there eagerness to alert everyone to every potentially hazardous item, you end up in a situation where every step, handrail, door, walkway, vehicle, person - everything is covered in bright yellow, orange, red and flashing lights, stripes, reflective strips and warning signs. it becomes too much to take in and the impact of a hi-viz jacket becomes lost and the geniune hazards are masked in the sea of "safety".
For example, my company conducted industrial radiography on site, and by law, we had to mark our barriers with, amongst other things orange flashing lights.
One night, a careless employee drove into the a stationary scaffolding trailer, so it was decreed that all vehicles and trailers should have orange flashing light around them. Then all excavations. Then all areas where scaffolding was being erected and so on. Before you knew it the whole site had more flashing lights than a Balearic night club and everyone just ignored them. This caused many people to enter our controlled area which lead to many more problems.
As the police have adopted the hi-viz jacket as uniform, it has empowered all hi-viz wearers with a police like power. I must admit, I have on occasion taken my official looking yellow coat out of the back of my car and asked people to move their cars so my fellow dive club members could all park together at a busy site. People rarely question you.
I'm no psychologist but I'm guessing this is that thing we hear people rferring to as "sensory overload". I experience it myself when watching action packed films at the cinema.
You can guarantee that the most action packed James Bond film always sends me to sleep...its a kind of soothing sleep and I find myslef fighting it off in the same way that driving at night on the motorawy with all the cats eyes in the roads and vehile lights overloads my senses.
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