Defense One | By: Laura Bliss | November 05, 2017:
After the truck attack in Manhattan, there’s no excuse for a limited imagination when it comes to safer streets.
How do you stop a terrorist, a crazy person, or just a rage-filled asshole in a commercial vehicle from ramming into a sea of people ? Don’t bother: According to the Los Angeles Times, it’s near impossible.
“New York truck attack was predictable, just not preventable,” reads the headline of an article from Tuesday outlining the challenges of identifying malevolent intent among truck renters, after a driver plowed into a crowded Manhattan bike path on Tuesday, killing eight people.
“If somebody has a valid driver’s license and they’re not on any kind of watch list, it is very, very difficult to prevent them from renting a vehicle and conducting a lone wolf attack,’’ said Jake Jacoby, president of the Truck Renting and Leasing Association.
But hang on, that doesn’t make events like Tuesday’s inevitable. The article briefly acknowledges the protective role that bollards—those hitherto unsung heavyweight stanchions—can play in stopping vehicles should they try to invade pedestrian space. But nowhere does it consider the possibility that cars should be banned in areas where driving can inflict this much harm, as advocates, policy analysts, and journalists (including myself) have suggested.
It’s a pretty simple idea, but it’s not mysterious why car-free zones wouldn’t occur to everyone. Cars are the organizing principle of virtually every U.S. city. Driving is the default. Even people who don’t drive cars have to pay for roads. To rob a famous line from David Foster Wallace, this is water.
Yet it is entirely possible to eliminate certain vehicles from areas where they pose the greatest threat.
Clarence Eckerson, the director of Streetfilms, has built a career in short documentaries of the world’s best practices in bike, walking, and transit planning – (see example above).
To help broaden car-oriented imaginations, he’s edited snippets from past videos highlighting European cities that have successfully blocked off large portions of their downtowns from single-occupancy vehicles. Two keys: rising bollards and strong political will.
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