D6’s Rice invents flagging night light
to improve visibility, safety on nighttime jobs

In numerous cases, our crews work evening/night shifts flagging for a project or in an emergency scenario. One of the chief safety concerns when night flagging is the ability to see and be seen, especially in cases of emergency.

For example, one of our employees receives a call at 2 a.m. about a crash on the roadway and needs help with traffic control. He doesn’t have much time to try and track down an emergency floodlight, nor would anyone be readily available at this time of day. As a result, it puts our crews in harm's way when not having the proper gear to do their job safely.

Distance alone makes resources scarce, unavailable, and unrealistic in cases of emergency. Most resources that ITD has available locally are not practical and are expensive to purchase or rent.

Being in that situation numerous times, District 6’s Dalton Rice came up with an effective and affordable alternative to mitigate the issue…an emergency floodlight.

The concept is simple and cost effective.

The prototype (built by Dalton, with mechanics Darren Doss and Ryan Stewart from the D6 Shop) has three lightforce ROK 40 LED lights, each putting out 3,200 raw lumen per light. The light draws 6.5 amps, and can plug into any cigarette lighter outlet or a 12-volt outlet. The three lights are mounted on top of a six-inch Panavise dual swivel pedestal mount, and fastened to two, three-foot-long square tubing stocks that are different sizes, allowing it to telescope for added light radius. It is then mounted to a Torq Locking Clamp that has a nominal mouth opening -- wide enough to accommodate all sizes of bedrail, headache racks, toolboxes, and more.

By elevating the fixture and creating a higher deployment point, it throws the light further down the road.

This light can be broken down easily and can be stored in a toolbox or under the back seat of a pickup. The light can fit able to fit on any work truck that has a bed or headache rack makes this light highly convenient and readily available at any point in time. Currently the cost to build this prototype is approximately $700, whereas the other options available cost anywhere from $1,500 - $3,000 per individual stand-alone unit.

Rice’s hope is to save lives and save money.

“My hope in the future is to be able to perfect this prototype that is in testing currently and implement not only in my shed, Challis, but districtwide and statewide,” he explained.

Published 09-07-18