As a human factors engineer I have a few comments:
First of all great idea - certainly has the opportunity to add another layer of safety into this safety critical task.

Advertisement - the video showed the spotter waving his arms and shouting to stop the accidents happening to no avail. How is a coloured glove going to make any difference.

Proliferation - often new technology is challenged by the concern associated with proliferation. Take self driving cars for example - concerns of how they will interact with cars driven by humans are ongoing. How will gloves like this affect the expectations of the drivers and their behaviour when interacting with spotters who do not own such a pair of gloves.

Wear and tear - some colours fade and completely change colour over time. Also how effective would the gloves be if they were dirty, or torn.

Environment - the good thing about traffic lights is that they illuminate but even they can be hard to spot in bright light or sun strike conditions - that is partly why the red or green lights have specific locations on a traffic signal. With gloves that have no illumination and clearly the same location for their red and green signals may have vastly reduced effectiveness in bright (or indeed dark) conditions.

I would love the opportunity to give these gloves a go and do some testing on them but for now (when I should be working) these are a few of my initial thoughts.

Just an observation. Looks like the high viz vests were a waste of time.

If you have drivers not understanding clear verbal and hand signals I'm not sure a coloured hand will make much difference. Proably better just to manage a wide exclusion zone. Obvious question is how many lives were, or nearly were lost due to poor hand signal communication

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Thanks for sharing Glenn, any product that looks at adding additional barriers between vehicles and people is never a bad thing.

Glenn, great idea, and gloves are cheap and disposable/recyclable these days so easier to manage to fade and wear and tear over time, in my experience workers can go through more than a few pairs of gloves each week. Give them a go I say.

Seriously I don't believe gloves are the answer.

WorkSafe have publicised the unacceptably high fatality rate associated with vehicles. Over the last 10 years there has been a vehicle involved in some way in 1/2 of all recorded fatal workplace accidents.

Where workers and others have to be in or around moving vehicles then the best thing a responsible PCBU can do is try separate people and the vehicle. The use of barriers and planned traffic management makes a huge difference and reduces the interaction between people and the vehicles.

I agree Monty.
Its a pretty sad day that we are relying on red/green gloves for our safety amongst moving vehicles.

I agree, gloves are only in addition to separation, but would improve operator and ground spotter interaction also along with radio/RT contact.

Some good points made above regarding these gloves being an added option to assist in the overall prevention of issues. I've had the same discussion a number of times regarding keeping workers hands visible around excavators etc.

I'm probably going to fall foul of the forum guidelines with this next bit of information but in the context of this discussion it is relevant. Showa 317 is a high visibility glove available through Lynn River which has a high visibility yellow liner and orange palm and luminous markings. I'm happy to provide some samples if forum members want to trial them to see if they make a difference.