Solved: Wheelchair Safety Tabard Increases Pedestrian Visibility

[jesse_the_k]

Thirty days ago, I asked how I might improve my visibility as a wheeling pedestrian. Did you ever have excellent ideas!

MyGuy and I have enjoyed this project: We prototyped, we scrounged, we pinned and unpinned. Today I wore the final version and it works great.

What & why of "Tabard"

It’s basically a rectangle of fabric with a neck hole halfway. In the 13th century, tabards had political information sewn on them (family or allegiance) and could be worn over warm clothing, metal armor, or indoors.

The tabard shape makes it easy to wear over my leather cape, over my rain cape, or over any clothing I have while walking upright. When I want to sneak around, it fits into a small bag that rides on the back of my chair.

Visibility

We found a lime yellow vest with an adjustable waist at the box box hardware store. As the first photo below shows, it lacks snaggy Velcro, closing in front with a zipper I’ll never have to use. Cutting off the waistband provided the basic tabard. The vest has wide retroreflective strips in both vertical and horizontal planes, which catch light from any direction.These strips ride on a blaze orange backing, providing excellent contrast with the lime yellow, resulting in super daylight visibility.

On j00j’s excellent suggestion, we added two pairs of Nathan Sports brand clip flashers. We clipped the green flashers to the vest’s two chest pockets. The red flashers clip to the tabard’s neck hole, at the level of (but not touching) my shoulders. The length and strength of these brand’s clips made them worth the extra price.

While browsing REI for Nathan Sports flashers, I saw an elegantly designed rechargeable Knog Quokka headlamp, also lime green, which seemed like the perfect accessory. The lights are a compact pod that slips out of the silicone headband and plugs directly into any USB B port to charge. It’s visible in the second picture below.

Keeping it on

This was the significant challenge: you correctly advised me that modifying my leather cape would be ugly and hard to do. I initially hoped to use magnets to keep the tabard and cape in sync. But my Quickie S636 is a large hunk of steel, and the magnets reliably leapt from the cape to the chair.

Because the tabard is big, the answer turned out to be "weigh it down." MyGuy folded up the bottom edge and sewed it to the underside, creating a 40mm high tube on the front and back. Browsing at the hardware store we found a 1.5m length of random cut light-duty chain: its 10x30mm twisted links made it very flexible. We captured the last link in a length of wire and pulled it through the tube, one length for the back and one for the front. We secured the chain with safety pins on each end and one in the middle. I need to add some weight to the front left corner to counteract the back-slippage caused by moving my hand on the relatively high joystick controller underneath.

Summary

Increased peace of mind as a rolling pedestrian: priceless. Total cost US$75 plus five hours of design, sewing and experimentation. Total tabard weight with chain and flashers is 570g (20 ounces). It’s a snap to put on: I fold the back wrong side to the front, place the front over my cape, then flip the back in place over my head. The generous neck hole provides room for my cape collar to be spread down.

• High-Visibility 2-Tone Reflective Safety Vest
  Internet #308848281 / Model # HDX46600-O / Store SKU #1004213989
  $23.00 at Home Depot

• Nathan StrobeLight Bundle of 2 Lights
  Item #159064
  $36.00 at REI

• random chain from hardware store
  ‌$15 at Quality Hardware on Park St

Pictures!

Bright lime polyester mesh with silver reflective tape backed with blaze orange edges. Four Nathan clip flashers are attached: two green in front chest pockets, two red at back of neckline. Bottom edges front and back are sewn up to make 40mm tube. Each tube contains 65cm length of brass 10x30mm twist chain.

I rotate 360° in my power wheelchair, wearing the safety tabard over my leather cape. Bright tabard is bright!