>The guy was alone operating 2 frequencies, had an emergency of another aircraft going on… is not so easy as many commenters from the armchair are insinuating

I'm not saying its easy, I'm actually specifically saying it's such a hard job we should have automated most of it away ages ago. If the only thing stopping an accident like this is an ATC employee, this _will_ happen in the future.

They came up with rail signals long before the idea of a computer even existed. It's hard to believe voice only communication of routes and runway access is the best path forward. Especially when passenger airliners are involved.

Automation emboldens policy makers to reduce human count because of the perceived increase in safety. This results in less eyes and brains monitoring for situations of automation failure or abnormalities. The corner stone of aviation safety over the last several decades has been having multiple, highly trained and experienced operators on station monitoring aviation systems to catch those moments when something goes wrong. Additionally, a culture where those operators are encouraged to speak up and be heard when something goes wrong without fear of being reprimanded is essential.

Automation is fantastic. We use it extensively in aviation. However, the long tail of 9s in reliable requires constant vigilance and oversight because anything that can go wrong will.

Who's entering the signal that the runway is locked? What if they screw up?

There are so many failure modes with vehicles and planes using the same tarmac that I fail to see how anything would be worth developing here that doesn't eliminate that requirement altogether.

Currently it’s automated at this airport: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl

Presumably this is lack of familiarity with this on the part of firefighters.

Ah, okay. I suppose it'll be part of the investigation but I wonder if the RELs were indiciating an unsafe runway which prompted the firetruck to ask or if they always ask for permission. Either way, I think my assesment is still correct: there are a lot of edge cases that neither lights nor humans are going to stop. O'Hare apparently has tunnels/underpasses for ground vehicles to use which seems basically foolproof for avoiding collisions like this.

No-one goes on a runway without positive ATC clearance, even emergency vehicles.

In Germany at least, if the runway access is "red" then the only thing that lets you cross the lights is an explicit ATC command to cross the reds as well as general clearance, and that's part of training and procedures because it's a semi-automated backup system to the human primary system. RED MEANS STOP is drilled into everyone precisely to reduce the number of runway incursions/collisions.

They got clearance and then obviously didn't bother to look outside, which is a dereliction of the basic responsibility of operating any vehicle on an airport surface. Clear left, clear right, then cross the hold short line.

(See my other comment below if you're tempted to say something about visibility.)

They could not see, because delta crosses in diagonal to the runway, such that the plane comes from behind (and the right side) so the driver has no chance to see. The truck was moving fast which is ok, because you want to clear the runway as fast as possible.

It doesn't matter what the orientation of the taxiway is. If you can't see when you're stopped straight on the taxiway centerline, you stop at an angle instead.

There is never an excuse for not visually clearing a runway before entering it.

Then peak your head out of the window, that’s not an excuse.

From where I'm sitting, it's not really "the fault" of ATC (even though it is) simply because I'm not trusting enough of ATC even when they're on "my side".

When cleared across a runway I'm still going to be looking in all directions, and proceed as fast as I can. I also look both ways at railway crossings even if the guards are up and silent.

I wonder if visibility was good enough that looking both ways before crossing the runway would have prevented this.

That'll be one of the things the NTSB investigates.

I also wonder if you're down to a "one controller" scenario if it would be better for there to be once frequency, not a ground/air split.

Or perhaps a "one controller" scenario is just terrible policy.

No. it wasn't. Delta crosses 04 in diagonal, so basically they should have taken the head out of the window and look behind. They had the clearance, so they just tried to cross. The problem is for some reason they did not hear the "Truck 1 stop" call.