A personal flotation device (abbreviated as PFD; also referred to as, lifejacket, life preserver, Mae West, life vest, life saver, cork jacket, buoyancy aid, flotation suit, etc.) is a device designed to assist a wearer, either conscious or unconscious, to keep afloat.
Devices designed and approved by authorities for use by civilians (recreational boaters, sailors, canoeists, kayakers, etc.) differ from those designed for use by passengers and crew of aircraft (helicopters, airplanes) and of commercial vessels (tugs, passenger ferries, cargo ships). Devices used by military (army, air force, special forces, marines, navy, coast guard) and police and enforcement agencies generally have features not found on civilian or commercial models, for example compatibility with other worn kit (e.g. survival vest, bulletproof vest/body armor, equipment harness, rappelling harness, parachute) and use of ballistic nylon cloth to protect pressurized carbon dioxide (CO2) canisters used for inflating the vest from injuring the wearer if struck by a round from a firearm. The ballistic cloth keeps the fragments from the canister from becoming shrapnel injurious to the user.
PFDs are available in different sizes and different designs purposed for various levels of protection.
Read more about Personal Flotation Device: Design(s), History
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or device:
“It has no share in the leadership of thought: it does not even reflect its current. It does not create beauty: it apes fashion. It does not produce personal skill: our actors and actresses, with the exception of a few persons with natural gifts and graces, mostly miscultivated or half-cultivated, are simply the middle-class section of the residuum.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)