This article highlights that there was a safety system in place requiring transponders for ground units of which they had none. So essentially, there’s an unusual hive of activity (owing to the emergency) in the tower and the complete lack of automatic safeguards to prevent vehicles from crossing a runway that has an approaching aeroplane… I think if we are looking at fault here - where human factors are allowed to not be completely infallible - it’s definitely the lack of transponders.
Why have we wasted all this time on gimmicky broken self driving cars when we could have invested in practical geofencing for vehicles like this?
It would be so easy to make the vehicles “smart” so they are informed when a runway is active and would not let the driver turn onto active runways without a manual approved override.
Compared to the gimmicky broken cars, transponders really work on very simple terms. At this moment right now, don’t enter this goddamn area.
Or a tower controller who sends trucks to cross with an inbound aircraft on short final.
Great breakdown Mr. Analyist.
