Snow Plow Drivers Behaving Badly

We’re all a little wiped out from the stronger-than-usual winter, but after the latest snowstorm to dump more than half a foot of snow on Washington, the stresses of winter appear to have gotten to at least one suburban snow plow driver.

Arlington filmmaker Jason Berry was driving along Military Road in the Donaldson Run neighborhood about 7:30 AM when he went over a hill to find a snow plow heading right toward him in the same lane.

“The driver did not move or slow down, I was forced out of my lane into the deeper snow in between lanes,” Berry tells Washingtonian in an email. Berry says his car started to spin out until he applied the parking brake.

Outraged, Berry decided to put his car back in gear and chase the wayward plow as it continued driving north in the southbound lane. He flipped on a video camera to capture the plow. Luckily, the road was mostly empty during the minute-long recording, but Berry managed to capture at least one other car swerving into the snow-capped median to avoid running into the massive plow.

In his narration, Berry calls the misguided snow plow the “most asinine thing I’ve ever seen,” though he admits to Washingtonian that was probably an extreme reaction at the time. But even if he’s seen worse, it still ranks among the most ludicrous.

“I am 44 and for 27 of those [years] I lived in Rochester, New York,” Berry says. “I know snow. I know plows. This guy was a straight-up jackass.”

The driver, whose name has not been released, was taken off-duty after Arlington’s Water, Sewer, and Streets Bureau was alerted to Berry’s video.

Benjamin Freed

Staff Writer

Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.