[sandworm101]

The public information is an afterthought. Cameras on plows are a liability thing. Plows often hit things they simply cannot see, stuff covered in snow. But after a collision is is very hard to determine what if anything was under the snow prior to impact. There is no way to really avoid this problem while still plowing. So cameras protect the city/state/driver by showing what things looked like from the driver's perspective. That the streams are shared with the public is a bonus.

[k12sosse]

Ontario Canada, here. MIs neighbour to the East.

My city has two persons in the cab, one is the driver, one is the spotter. The spotter really just calls audibles on the stuff they see.

It's cheaper to hire that spotter than pay the insurance for single operator scenarios.

We can get some heavy snow days, the kind that make everything come to a standstill until things are cleared by these hulking beasts (kudos for naming one plow "hulk"). Having access to this information would be awesome.

Not surprising the home of the motor city would (appear) have their road clearing under control.

[sandworm101]

Most terrifying moment I ever had a car was passing a plow+sand trailer on the colloquial highway (BC). He was plowing the right lane and I was following semi trucks passing in the relatively clear left lane. Right as I got beside the plow's trailer it jackknifed 45 degrees away from me. I though we were all going to die in a huge pileup. But it turned out to be one of these. I had seen them many times. I had never seen one engage the second plow while going 60mph. I did not know they could do it on the move.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJEgkbq_b2Q

[k12sosse]

That's wild. Thank you for sharing.

[paledot]

And rightly so - just about every year there's a news article about another pedestrian or cyclist killed by a snowplow here in Montreal.

[k12sosse]

That's exactly it. The unfortunate truth about the operators is they're under intense pressure to perform under harsh time constraints.

They're out there before the snow falls, during the snowfall and until the snow is off the road operating essentially a multi-ton switchblade in darkness where everything is hidden beneath an opaque blanket of frozen water. And your vehicle (before the blade is attached) is as wide as the lane.

The visibility conditions are bad, the road surface is bad (that's why you're out there!) And your boss is remotely monitoring your every movement, questioning every work stoppage as if stopping for a coffee, or to take a dump is going to bankrupt the economy. Even operating 'just' the sidewalk plows seems super stressful.

I have had close friends who were the spotters for 40-year veteran operators, it seems like a huge rush that (despite all these challenges) could be kind of fun.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-snowplo...

[notatoad]

it being an afterthought is, imho, what makes it so excellent. the attitude of "we collected this data, might as well make it public" is exactly how governments should operate.