By Brian Murphy, The Washington Post
Last summer, the French seaside of Nice counted its dead after a truck mowed through crowds marking Bastille Day. Thirteen months later, it was Barcelona’s famed Las Ramblas that was turned into a killing field as a driver used a delivery van as a tool of terrorism.
In between, other streets in Stockholm, London and Berlin were strewn with dead and injured after vehicles were used in terrorist assaults – an emerging and troubling front for security forces as the normal flow of urban life and traffic has quickly become the source of potential threats.
The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, told reporters Friday he plans to bring together leaders from cities across Europe next months to study ways to better safeguard against vehicle attacks.
“We won’t win the war with the rules of peace,” Estrosi said during a memorial event to honor the Barcelona victims.
Estrosi said his city has allocated nearly $35 million seeking better traffic monitoring and protection measures following the carnage in July 2016 when 86 people were killed in the truck rampage along the Mediterranean corniche.
Other cities have taken steps such as pedestrian-only zones sealed off by traffic-blocking barriers. In Las Vegas, hundreds of bollards were installed along the Strip in officials called a “a matter of life and death” to protect people from those who could use vehicles as weapons. New Orleans has put in plans to tighten controls on vehicles entering the crowded Bourbon Street area.
Police across the United States, meanwhile, have reassessed security precautions for demonstrations and other marches after a driver plowed into counterprotesters opposing a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
“I am convinced that life will prevail over death and that we will triumph over barbarism and terror,” the Nice mayor Estrosi said.
But security experts note that city planners need to move away from standard traffic barriers – such as large planters or decorative posts – to far-stronger blockades designed to stop even speeding vehicles.
Charles Oakes, an urban traffic security engineer, wrote in a design journal in April that city officials need to reconsider the “expectation of civility” in traffic-control measures, and move toward barriers built to “withstand deliberate wanton acts of destruction and death.”
The Nice mayor Estrosi said the planned Sept. 28-29 meeting would include Julian King, the European Union commissioner in charge of security issues.
“We can’t ignore the risk that exists. There can never be ‘zero risk,'” King said in December.
