Industrial Traffic Lights 101: Making the Workplace Safer & More Efficient

Love them or hate them, traffic lights are there to serve a very important purpose – to establish an efficient order of movement and ensure safety. While we may think that they can only fulfil their purpose on busy roads, traffic lights can also find great use at parking lots, mine sites, construction sites and other industrial complexes. In fact, all work sites that involve high frequency of movement and vehicles coming and going can benefit from traffic signals.

At these places, traffic lights are used to delegate the movement of vehicles, signal vacancy or lack thereof, increase safety and more. Since they have a large variety of uses, traffic lights are available in different designs. For instance, there are lights that are used to signal there's some kind of hazard that people should be careful around, which usually consist of only a single, flashing amber light. The lights that tell people that there's a serious danger and that they need to evacuate consist of only a single red light.

Although they can differ in the role they play and the colours they use, most industrial traffic lights consist of the same elements: a signal display, a controller and supports. The signal display consists of the lights themselves which the workers see. These traffic lights are mounted on a vertical or horizontal support and operated by a traffic signal controller which is “the brain” behind everything. In the past, traffic signal controllers operated using a simple mechanism that produced signals every few seconds, similar to a clock.

However, today, there are controllers that can be adjusted for the time of day as well as the frequency of duration. You can even choose a real time traffic signal controller that can detect the presence of vehicles and workers in the vicinity and send suitable signals. There's also an option to manually control the traffic lights via a push button.

Besides being available in different colours, industrial traffic lights can also feature different types of bulbs. Since these lights are crucial to the workplace operating efficiently and running and maintaining them can be expensive, it's important to choose wisely. With that being said, LED traffic lights are usually the best option. They are durable with an incredible lifespan of up to 50 000 hours and offer high visibility. They also are energy-efficient, and spend 70-80% less energy than halogen and incandescent bulbs.