If the Karma is plugged into the dock, the cradle glow illumination has (with recent versions of the Karma firmware) some options for how the glow behaves, under Settings/Dock. If it's set to "Pulse to music", you might mistake the pulsing of a playing song looks like traffic LED indication.

Otherwise, if the Karma isn't plugged into the dock at all, ther cradle glow LEDs should not be lit at all, as far as I know.