in defense of plow drivers, i offer my former seven years of employment in public works municipality and a LOT of experience in dealing with complaints.
now, i might not have ***told * ** you what i’ve written below, but you can be damn sure i was thinking it! 
to wit:
chances are very good the driver that just took out your mailbox has been out in snowy conditions plowing for a lot longer than your office work day lasts. tired? you have no idea how tired they get. probably don’t want to, although OSHA had gone a long way to improving that situation in recent years. it’s a heavy-duty strain on the senses from start to finish.
in order for plow blades to do what they’re designed to do, the driver has to maintain a certain truck speed, otherwise the blade won’t hold to the road and there won’t be a nice clean road surface for you to drive on. if they stopped, a goodly chunk of the road wouldn’t get cleaned off, since it takes a certain distance for the truck to get back up to speed. and in most cases, the blade doesn’t take out your mailbox. the snow wave – which is already traveling at a pretty darn good clip ahead of the truck – is usually the culprit. not always, of course, and sometimes mailboxes do get sacrificed to the snow gods because of an inattentive driver.
if the town driver did take out your mailbox, all you had to do was call in and tell me and our department would buy and install a proper replacement for you (matching whatever covenant your subdivision might impose) as soon as the road conditions improved enough where we *could * take the time to do so.
remember, there are hundreds of miles of roads to be plowed – even in little towns – and it all takes time. the pressure is on with the first snowflake and doesn’t let up until the last foot of road is bare to the asphalt or concrete.
the state takes care of it’s state roadways and interstates but the rest is up to a county or a city or a town or even a private contractor if things are sticky enough. main roads and thoroughfares are the primary targets, residential streets are secondary, and cul-de-sacs? you are SO way down on the priority list. if you don’t want that four feet of snow sitting at the foot of your driveway, don’t purchase a home in a residential cul-de-sac, or put up with it until we can get back and improve things. that was the numero uno complaint i would hear over and over: my driveway’s plowed under!
and lastly, if a driver ever did give you the finger or behave in some similar fashion and you caught the truck number and reported the incident to us or to the town manager’s office, said driver would find his ass severely chewed and a witten reprimand in his personnel file before the end of the next business day. needless to say it’s frowned upon - and if it isn’t it should be.
getting off my soapbox now. and i too used to lose my mailbox to plow drivers when i lived in a residental neighborhood (different city). i’d just shrug, go out, and hammer it back into place, because i’d poorly attached it to the post in the first place. something i never did repair properly…
these days i find myself chasing my condo complex private contract driver down the street because he’s missed plowing out my driveway – AGAIN. 
