misd-agin, re post 60, I agree whole heartedly. It is reasonable to expect pilots to try to be aware of what is going on around them, and most of will try to do so, at least the bulk of the experienced ones anyway.
However, I feel that ATC issuing numerous simultaneous landing or take off clearances for the same runway is putting far to great a dependence on that pilot SA, without any way of verify that SA is accurate. It is begging for a collision. WHile there is no excuse for pilots to abdicate all responsibility and let ATC blindly drive them around the skies without working out their own SA and risk assessment, neither is it reasonable for ATC to dump all the workload and SA responsibility on pilots. Both should be working on it.