Maneuvering a snow plow that is more than 15 feet wide is a tight squeeze on a road surface that’s only about 18 feet wide — or less.

About 75 area PennDOT drivers this week are being challenged to do just that on a half-mile obstacle course in Unity meant to brush up their skills as the winter road maintenance season approaches.

Standard winter training for drivers began in September, according to Jay Ofsanik, safety press officer for Uniontown-based PennDOT District 12. He explained this week’s extra course, offered annually since 2011 at a PennDOT stockpile site, gives them additional practice in operating a wing plow — an extra blade on the passenger side of a truck that can be retracted or extended, to roughly double the width available to push aside snow on the more vulnerable edge of a road.

“We all know how the berm of a road has a tendency to break down,” Ofsanik said. “This allows our trucks to clear those berms without putting weight on them and doing additional damage.

“It’s a good tool for our drivers. It makes their job easier and faster.”

Each driver gets two attempts at driving a 65,000-pound truck and plow along a curving course without hitting any of the 450 traffic cones or several concrete jersey barriers that form its border. The driver has to angle the wing plow to avoid mailboxes that jut out over the course while using it to tap strategically placed flexible target bars.

“It shows they can judge and adjust the height” of the plow, Ofsanik said of the targets, noting drivers usually improve their accuracy on a second run through the course. “They get that bit of extra confidence.”

Wing plows are available on about half of the trucks in the District 12 fleet, which includes 68 assigned among 10 stockpile sites in Westmoreland County. The District 12 maintenance area also includes Fayette, Washington and Greene counties.

The extra obstacle training is meant to enhance plow operators’ efficiency and safety, but other drivers who fail to follow safety precautions on snow-covered roads provide a major challenge for those behind the wheels of PennDOT trucks.

“We plow at 20 miles per hour, and everybody else is going 50 because they want to get to work,” said Scott Will of Ligonier Township, an operator instructor with 24 years of experience at PennDOT. “People should allow 20 minutes to a half hour more to get to work on time when it snows.”

When a plow is making its first run, it’s traveling over an untreated road and may have to stop suddenly, yet many motorists fail to stay the recommended minimum of 100 feet behind a plow, Will said. “I’ve seen them as close as 3 feet from my spinner,” used in spreading salt, he said.

On four-lane roads in particular, motorists may be tempted to pass a plow.

“Everybody wants to try to pass the wing-plow truck on Route 30,” Will said. But, “There’s a reason we’re going slow.”

PennDOT receives complaints from motorists who say their windshield was damaged by material being spread by a snow plow, Ofsanik said.

“If material coming off the back of that truck hit your windshield, you were too close. That stuff doesn’t bounce 100 feet down the road.”

More winter driving tips can be found in the “Traffic Safety and Driver Topics” section of PennDOT’s highway safety website, JustDrivePA.com.

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