Snow plough fires slush at traffic and causes 40 car accidents

A snow plough driver in Ohio was suspended after firing ice and slush at drivers, causing accidents involving 40 vehicles.

Video of the incident allegedly saw the plough operator direct a huge arc of slush across the highway median and into oncoming traffic over the course of several miles.

Truck driver Michael Lemon caught the incident, which police say left 12 people injured, on his cab dashcam.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Mr Lemon, whose truck was damaged during the incident, told News5 Cleveland.

“I didn’t know how to react, I was just dumbfounded that somebody could be so reckless.”

And he added: “The roads are dangerous, even the professionals make mistakes and then some of them are just flat out reckless, he should not have been ploughing at 70 miles an hour.”

One car can be seen spinning off the Ohio Turnpike and down an embankment south of Sandusky after their vehicle was pelted with the slush.

Ferzan Ahmed, executive director of the Turnpike Commission, said that the plough driver was taken off shift, tested for alcohol and drugs and placed on administrative leave while an investigation is carried out.

He added that the plough drivers have special training and equipment for clearing threads of snow and ice and that thread has one of the best safety records in the US.

“This was an isolated incident involving a single operator and is not representative of our employees or our operations,” Mr Ahmed said.

In December, transportation officials in Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania told The Associated Press they were facing a major shortage of snow plough drivers.

The situation became so bad that some towns in Massachusetts were offering wages of up to $310 per hour, while Colorado’s Department of Transportation handed out a $2,000 bonus for road-maintenance-workers.