I woke up this morning to two headlines that felt like they belonged to different worlds, but the more I read, the more I realized they were telling the exact same story.
First, there's the near-miss at LAX. A passenger jet makes a wrong turn on the tarmac and almost clips another plane. It's terrifying. It's the kind of thing that makes you grip your armrest a little tighter on your next flight and silently count the seconds until you're safely on the ground. Then, almost in the same breath, there's news out of Ohio State, where a fraternity is suspended because a video surfaced showing men literally engulfed in flames. One story is about technology and protocol failing. The other is about culture and judgment failing. But both reveal the same uncomfortable truth: we have a serious problem with blind spots.
In aviation, we obsess over safety. We have black boxes, radar, endless regulations, and entire agencies dedicated to making sure planes don't crash into each other. Yet here we are in 2026, nearly watching two planes collide because someone missed a turn. It makes you wonder: how many other "wrong turns" are happening right now that we just haven't seen yet? How many near-misses never make the news because someone caught it at the last second? We treat these incidents as freak accidents, but maybe they're not accidents at all. Maybe they're warnings we keep ignoring.
Then you look at Ohio State. These weren't accidents. This was a choice. A group of people decided that a stunt involving fire was worth the risk. And it took a video going viral for anyone to stop it. That's the real scary part. We didn't stop it because of our values. We didn't stop it because someone in charge was paying attention. We stopped it because of our visibility. It took a camera and an internet connection for anyone to care. That should bother us more than it does.
We live in a world that is increasingly complex, faster, and more dangerous, but our systems for managing risk haven't kept up. Whether it's air traffic control at one of the busiest airports in the world or social dynamics on a college campus, we're relying on outdated instincts. We assume someone else is watching. We assume the rules will hold. We assume the "normal" will protect us. We assume that because things have worked out before, they will keep working out forever. That's not confidence. That's complacency dressed up as faith.
But what if the normal is broken? What if the systems we trust are held together with duct tape and good intentions? What if the people we assume are paying attention are just as distracted as the rest of us?
I'm not saying we need to ban fraternities or ground all flights. That's not the point. I'm saying we need to stop treating these near-disasters as isolated incidents. The LAX pilot didn't wake up wanting to cause a catastrophe. The students in Ohio didn't wake up wanting to get burned. They were operating in systems that allowed—maybe even encouraged—risky behavior until it was too late. The problem isn't just the individual mistake. The problem is the environment that made the mistake possible and the oversight that let it happen.
As we move through this week, with Congress back in session and fighting over budgets and impeachments, I hope we're paying attention to the ground beneath our feet, not just the political theater above our heads. Because whether it's a plane on a tarmac or a group of kids with a lighter, the result of ignoring the warning signs is always the same. We get lucky for a while, and then we don't.
We got lucky this time. Both stories ended with near-misses and suspensions, not funerals. But luck isn't a strategy. It's certainly not a safety plan. And it's definitely not a way to run a country. We can do better. We have to do better. Let's fix the blind spots before the next turn goes wrong.
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