Institute for Transportation

About the research

The ability for snowplow operators to see ahead and around their equipment is crucial to the safe and efficient clearing and treatment of roadways during storm events. Under poor visibility, a plow operator may lose situational awareness of their surroundings, which includes other vehicles, the edge or center of the roadway, ditches, curbs, and so forth. Aside from the direct safety impacts on the travelling public in the form of a potential crash, the loss of visibility by plow operators means a need to pay even closer attention to their environment, leading to increased fatigue, stress, etc. Low visibility also increases the likelihood of striking minor objects, such as concrete curbing, leading to the potential for operator injuries to occur, not to mention infrastructure damage.

There is a need for research to investigate the available technologies that can be employed in-vehicle to improve the visibility of the roadway environment for plow operators. As autonomous vehicles become more sophisticated, the technologies they employ to view the roadway are likely transferable to activities like snow plowing. The application of these technologies (i.e., a Global Positioning System [GPS], different types of cameras, other sensors) to snowplows would provide operators with improved visibility of the road ahead. However, until an investigation is made into what technologies are available, their capabilities and costs, what agencies within Minnesota and nationally may be already using them, among other questions, the potential for widespread application of such devices remains largely untapped.