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If ATC says you're clear to cross the runway and then you glance down and the screen shows a plane projected to cross directly in front of you in 10 seconds you'd probably think twice, right? This hypothetical cheap appliance has GPS and a compass and probably even a camera feed facing forward. It isn't a difficult technical problem to calculate the time offset at which the object traveling along the crosscutting path will pass in front of you.

> The difference between "hold short at runway 22" and being on runway 22 is much less than 30 seconds in some cases.

What is the typical minimum temporal separation? I would have expected at least 45 or 60 seconds given the cost of a plane and the imminent threat to life.



So, it does appear I was correct here - it's a difficult thing to solve.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigators-search-an...

> Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference Tuesday that the airport uses a safety system called ASDE-X to track surface movements of aircraft and vehicles.

> "ASDE-X did not generate an alert due to the close proximity of vehicles merging and unmerging near the runway, resulting in the inability to create a track of high confidence,” Homendy read from an analysis of the system’s performance.




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