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by k12sosse 1626 days ago
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.
2 comments
sandworm101 1626 days ago
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

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k12sosse 1626 days ago
That's wild. Thank you for sharing.
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paledot 1626 days ago
And rightly so - just about every year there's a news article about another pedestrian or cyclist killed by a snowplow here in Montreal.
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k12sosse 1626 days ago
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...

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