“Semper Viligans”
~Motto of the Civilian Air Patrol
No matter where I’m headed, leaving the house puts me on one of two six lane boulevards. I suppose that’s life in a metropolis of four million: cities have their benefits; traffic is not one of them.
Turning on to one of those main streets on a Saturday run to the grocery store, when the traffic light turned green, I did what I always do: look both ways to make sure approaching vehicles were actually going to stop. A requirement? No. A simple act of self-preservation?
Absolutely.
The only vehicle coming my way on the crossing road– a white pickup truck going every bit of the posted speed limit of 55 mph – showed absolutely no indication of doing anything even remotely resembling stopping for a red light. Vehicle and driver cruised through the intersection as if the stoplight didn’t exist.
For that driver, I suppose it didn’t.
If you’re thinking, “What’s the big deal with that? Stuff like that happens all the time” I would not disagree. The next day – Sunday – there was a red pickup parked right in the middle of the same intersection: upside down. The driver was standing on the corner, talking on his cell phone; a sedan with a crushed front end was sitting in the crossing lane. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the pickup driver was on the phone to his lawyer.
As for me and that white pickup, the driver did decide to stop at the next intersection, a mile down the road. That’s where when I pulled right up behind him – and the company vehicle he was driving. That a truck number and company name were prominently displayed I took as a sign, so I reached for my phone and snapped a photo.
After seeing the crash on Sunday, it occurred to me I should do something about what went down on my watch. Finding the driver’s employer on the internet was easy: a high-profile public agency with a splashy website; even listed an email address for their CEO.
At 2 PM Sunday, sitting in his in-basket were the facts and photos; by 6 pm I’d received a reply.
I was impressed: an executive who reads emails on the weekends and takes running a red light seriously.
Jazz Flight 646
So much for life on the streets of Houston; how about running a red light in a highly regulated and tightly controlled space, like a runway at a big airport? Don’t think that could never happen.
Late on a Sunday night in March, an Air Canada Jazz flight was cleared for landing at New York’s Laguardia Airport. At the same time, a seven-vehicle aircraft fire-fighting brigade was responding to an emergency. Airports are places where flight controllers are in charge of everything that moves – in the air and on the ground. As the fire engine moved to the head of the convoy, its driver asked the Tower for permission to cross the live runway the Jazz fight was about to land on.
Twenty-eight seconds later, the aircraft collided with the fire engine at a ground speed of more than 100 miles an hour. Two pilots were killed; thirty-nine passengers injured, six seriously; the fire engine demolished.
The unenviable task of investigating aviation tragedies like this falls to the National Transportation Safety Board. The Board has a century’s worth of experience; you won’t find anyone better at sifting through the forensic evidence and evaluating all the related factors, making sense of what happened. As you would expect, their work takes place in an emotionally charged atmosphere with all kinds of interested parties, none of whom wants to be found in the wrong.
Sound familiar?
Part of the Board’s operational savvy – investigation skills, process, and execution – is their ability to keep peace in the family while ferreting out the truth. In this accident (the Board uses that word, so please no sermons that “accidents don’t happen”) there were upwards of a dozen entities with a dog in the fight, including the New York City Police union.
That might sound familiar, too.
Despite the hurdles, in a matter of weeks the Board produced a fifteen-page preliminary report, with the facts that explain what went wrong: when, where, what, how and who. The only thing missing is the why; something that in my view is highly overrated.
As for you, the preliminary report is more than sufficient to understand the lessons you need to apply where you work – and lead.
28 Seconds of Chaos
Wading through the Board’s report is not for the faint of heart. Among the challenges are two dozen aviation acronyms. I felt it necessary to create a glossary of terms to make sense of things: LGA, Guardia Airport; LC, local controller, aka, the Tower; ARFF is an aircraft rescue fire-fighting vehicle; there were seven of them. One acronym is deserving of special attention: REL, red runway entrance lights.
Did you know there are red lights embedded in surface of taxiways telling vehicles not to enter or cross – because an aircraft is coming? REL’s are even programmed to sync up with the aircraft as it moves along a runway. Not hard to figure out what caused that technology to be created and installed.
Reader advisory: if you view technology as the solution to problems created by human behavior, what comes next will not be to your liking.
The 28 seconds between the request to cross a live runway and the collision was the crux of the problem. Facts paint a picture of chaos: permission granted by the Tower to the convoy to cross the runway; a moment later, the controller apologized for his error, instructed the convey to stop, and repeated his command: stop.
The fire engine’s driver got the first message – ok to cross – just not any other. The vehicle continued to accelerate, heading straight towards the active runway as the landing aircraft touched down.
With the RELs – runway entrance lights – illuminated and red. Another case of running a red light.
Your Interest in the Case
By policy, the NTSB is compelled to determine probable cause: the primary and direct reason for the event. Why the Board chose a term of art associated with committing a crime, that’s something you’ll have to ask them.
That said, most places I go, running a red light is against the law.
The Board has plenty of facts and factors to choose from: permission to cross was first granted, then denied; conversations took place on multiple radio frequencies; radar didn’t track all seven emergency vehicles; the normal human response to an emergency; the REL extinguished two seconds before the collision (yes, you read that right.) I do not envy the Board’s assignment.
They have their challenges; you have yours: human error can prove fatal. Your job is to prevent that from happening. Good luck if you think you delegate that to technology – like RELs – and check the box, “problem solved”.
Driving is today’s cause célèbre, so, getting down to specifics, your duty is making darn sure nobody in your business who gets behind the wheel of a company vehicle runs a red light. Period. It doesn’t matter if they’re the Fire Chief in the company’s fire engine responding to an emergency – or someone fetching an overtime lunch for a crew working on Saturday.
Under no circumstances is it acceptable for a driver to become blind to traffic controls or traffic. Had the fire engine driver simply stopped at the red light and looked down the runway there would have been no tragedy.
I suppose it’s possible you’re the lucky leader with no followers who drive. But yours probably do, and, as you know, statistically driving is one of the riskiest things people do at work.
So, what’s your process to keep someone from running a red light on your watch?
Setting Expectations
There’s a place for driver training and education. But when someone runs a red light, what are the odds the “probable cause” (to borrow a term) was the lack of knowledge?
Situational awareness is the more likely suspect.
You can’t be there to when needed to remind a good follower to keep their eyes on the road, look both ways before crossing the street, ignore the cell phone, make no assumptions as to what other drivers will do.
In other words, “Look out for others – and yourself.”
That sounds a lot like the opening of what around here we call the Safety Stump Speech: setting expectations and giving advice about some aspect of working safety. What’s your Stump Speech on driving, situational awareness, and stopping at stop lights?
Better to set expectations and give your best advice now than to explain what someone should have done – after an event.
The Last Word
As for that white pickup running a red light on my watch, management’s solution was to send the culprit off to driver training. As corrective action goes, you can evaluate that solution.
I picture the driver suffering through Defensive Driving on a Saturday morning, muttering under his breath, “Some idiot gets me in trouble with the big boss, and ruins my day off.”
If that sounds more than a bit familiar, it might suggest a different problem and a more appropriate solution to change behavior.
Paul Balmert
June 2026