A commuter plane crashed in a mountainous area of Vancouver Island in February, killing three people including the pilot. Normally, such a story wouldn’t warrant more than a curious read, just to see what happened. I’m an aviation enthusiast, and therefore interested in why airplanes sometimes come to ignominious ends. A CBC reporter’s interview with the pilot’s father is what spawned this column.

The father claims the young pilot (age 25) was concerned about flying that particular airplane, and that he wanted to leave the airline over undisclosed safety issues. That type of aircraft had known icing issues in certain weather conditions, though investigators don’t suspect icing was an issue in this case. I’m sure the pilot knew what was wrong, but having already ventured too far down the proverbial path of no return, he would have found his options unforgivingly limited.

That’s a position many of us have been in at one time or another, I’d guess.

I’d bet there are few among us who can say they’ve never placed productivity or employability ahead of safety. I’ve let myself be pushed into situations that I should have refused. Sometimes mechanical, sometimes performance related, but situations where the outcome could have been worse. There may be people out there somewhere who got dangerously close to me at the wrong time, but by some good grace, remain oblivious to the danger I put them in.

Thinking back, I can say I should have refused — but there were pressures. Time, money, appointments, home time; I can’t recall, exactly, but they seemed real enough then. I made my choices, and fortunately nobody has had to live with the consequences. Not so for the young aviator who perished trying to get his plane and his passengers safely back on the ground.

Some might say he had his chance to refuse, but didn’t take it. I empathize with the guy if he really felt that way. His job likely hung in the balance, and it’s not easy for a young pilot to build time preparing for a job driving the big jets. If pilots were in hot demand, he might have been more comfortable saying no. I’ve faced similar choices, and chose like that pilot did. Only, I’m still here.

A driver’s life may not hang so precariously in the balance following a bad decision, but there are instances where drivers are forced into situations they’d likely rather not be in. For example, picking up a trailer at a customer’s loading dock and finding a significant defect during a walk-around inspection. How many times have you asked a driver to sneak it back to the shop where it can be repaired, instead of sending out a service truck?

How may times have you elected to run a load that’s beyond the limit on weight or hours, for example? It’s not that running a little heavy or over hours is going to kill you, but if something happens, the lawyers will eat you alive after the fact.

Tolerating risk is part of everyday life, and each of us has our own level of acceptance. But I can tell you, having been there — borrowing an expression from aviation, I’d much prefer to be on the ground wishing I were flying, than the other way around. I’m sure that pilot had a moment, some minutes before he augered his plane into the ground, recalling that he should have called in sick that day.

As is often the case in trucking, novice employees sometimes take jobs with carriers that place them in situations beyond their competency. When the driver can’t get a job with a good carrier, they take work with a poor one — being new to the biz, they often don’t know the difference. And for many of the same reasons as our ill-fated pilot, take an assignment they might have refused if that gig wasn’t the only one in town.

Experienced drivers do it too, often believing they can manage the risk. And carriers sometimes roll the dice believing they aren’t likely to be caught in an inspection with faulty equipment so close to home, or that once they’ve dispatched the driver, the risk is for him or her to manage. More often than not, everything works out. But as the smashed Cessna 108, buried up to the windscreen on a mountainside near Port Alberni, B.C. will attest, not always.