Storms—especially winter storms—are undeniably growing more intense. When a community is digging out from a massive snowstorm, people rely heavily on municipal snow plow drivers to provide safe, thorough, and efficient services—plow drivers are the ones who enable the rest of the community to get to work and school safely, procure necessary supplies, and access emergency health services.

Conditions that would have once been the “storm of the decade” now come almost every year—often out-of-season, and with little warning. Now, more than ever,  we need to train new drivers long before the first flakes fall. Inexperienced drivers can wreak havoc on the community they are trying to serve. In January 2022, an Ohio plow driver caused accidents involving 40 vehicles—and injuring a dozen people—by firing icy snow and slush across a highway median, directly into the path of oncoming traffic.

It is essential that plow driver training maximizes realistic conditions without risking public safety or expensive equipment. Simulator training is one of the safest means of driver training: It can be safely done, any time of year, while still offering transferable skills and a realistic experience of treacherous roadway conditions.

Training with Snow Plow Simulators Works

A 2022 study from the University of Cincinnati concluded that snow plow simulator training is among the safest and most effective approaches. Investigators looked at both existing academic literature on snow plow driver training, as well as specific training practices at both corporations and several state-level Departments of Transportation. This included both “traditional” on-the-road training and several different simulation-based approaches.

The Cincinnati researchers found that simulation training benefits include reductions in the number of vehicle crashes, as well as significant cost savings in both training and municipal fuel costs. The same study recommended that an effective simulation training platform requires powerful motion and visual systems. In addition, to maximize economic benefits of a snow plow driver training program, the investigators recommended developing in-house training capability, instead of hiring private trainers or renting equipment for shorter intensive training programs. In the long run, this drastically reduces costs while improving training outcomes. It is difficult to overstate the benefit of being able to train in simulated night time blizzard conditions at 8:00am on an August or September morning, and to be able to offer drop-in retraining throughout the year, at your convenience.

These researchers further found that “effectiveness also depends on the expertise of the training supervisors.” That’s why FAAC’s snow plow training simulators offer a comprehensive onboarding and “train-the-trainer” program that helps you tailor your training program to meet your department’s specific needs.

Improve Your Driver Training Program with FAAC

For more than 50 years, FAAC has provided simulation systems and turnkey training solutions to federal and state agencies, law enforcement, fire services, EMS, and private industry. We were the first to develop an interactive, reconfigurable truck driving simulator for commercial training. Our training simulators combine a high degree of realism (including immersive visuals, audio, and motion) with the ability to create custom scenarios or rely on the built-in training library. This provides a cost-effective and safe method for driver training and testing, with the flexibility communities need.

Have questions? Ready to discuss your department’s needs? Contact the experts at FAAC today to find your ideal simulator training solution.