There are better ways, just look at military anti-tank bollards. Those will stop a truck, and archive what you want. They are also not as temporary, usually.
This seems like a relatively new phenomenon in the past 10 years or so. That or maybe I just never would hear about the vehicle attacks prior and it is just more spoken about now.
Regardless whether this is a new phenomenon at least they are taking steps to mitigate the impact of these types of attacks.
I think they're more popular now because building owners are trying to keep their insurance rates down and there is an industry to take advantage of that.
I'm not saying that some of these companies don't want to help prevent another tragedy or mitigate them, however there are a ton of companies trying to make a quick buck off of people emotional and suffering from a tragedy.
Some form of detection/protection is nice, but I feel that we shouldn't have to button down every school and treat it like Ft. Knox either. Schools can hardly afford after school programs, much less hi-tech security systems/operators.
They don't just stop using vehicles as weapons. It's important they also stop vehicles which are out of control from colliding with pedestrians, or drivers who are having a stroke, or just messy accidents from spilling over into pedestrian areas.
There was a nasty accident here in Ottawa in January where a double-decker city bus collided with an overhang at a bus station. Three people died and many more were injured. There was a great deal of focus in the media about improving the crash worthiness of buses for occupants on the upper deck, but a simple line of bollards at the front of the station would have saved lives by preventing the upper level of the bus from colliding with the station in the first place.
The UK used to be calmer about terrorist attacks - they're not worth putting down your pint over, really - but lately the US panic culture seems to have spread here.
Could you try to quantify that claim instead of just throwing it out there?
Particularly in the context that ramming attacks have become rather common across the world in these past years [0], with plenty of them having a "non-terrorist" background [1].
[0] https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/society/18798/rise-in-vehicle-at...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack#List_of...
You see, nothing to do with Muslims! It must be social contagion instead.
If you check the Wikipedia link above, the tally is 13 to 1 in 2018, as but one example.
In the list of 'non-terrorist' incidents, there are 2014 Dijon and Nantes attack and 2017 Antwerp. There may be more.
Here's an Apple store without bollards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od5YG6kBrJs
At least these do some actual good.
Please walk me through your logic to believe that restrictions on knife carry are reasonable. I cannot see it, no matter how much I try.
The law allows anyone to carry a non-locking folding knife with a blade of up to 76mm in length, unless there is evidence that they intend to use it as a weapon. The law also allows anyone to carry any bladed article if they have a lawful reason to do so - a chef can carry their knife bag to work, a carpenter can carry a utility knife to a job site, but you can't just drive around with a knife in your car for no good reason.
(I also carry a concealed handgun because someday it might come in extremely handy, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish.)
It's not just the Brits who would wonder why you need a blade longer than 3" for those uses.
The law you just described is beyond asinine to the point it is unfathomable to me the type of person who would propose such depth of stupidity be enacted as legislation.
The law you just described is literally tyrannical. It is so deeply unreasonable on its face that any right-thinking person should oppose it, and the means to enforce it necessitate the use of the violence of the state. It is fundamentally oppressive.
A knife is a tool, and is an essential tool for all manner of use to enable a person to more effectively live their life and do their work. Restricting it in this manner is a restriction on livelihood and is evil.
It can get worse.
The knife I keep in my pocket would only be a weapon as a last resort. The blade steel is tuned to hold a sharper edge for longer, and that makes it relatively brittle. The blade does not lock, making stabbing and slashing dangerous for the wielder's fingers. None of the tools lock. Someone would be better off keeping the whole thing closed and punching with their fist wrapped around it.
But there the cops go, holding a ruler up to the longest cutting tool. As though the only thing that differentiates it from a military pig-poker is just centimeters.
They can be opened with one hand, but it's slow and nothing you could do while using the same hand to fight.
They have to fit the wielder's hand, however... big hands tend to require too large knives...
I'll have to agree however that the blade is brittle. You can't stab something that moves with them, unless you want it to break off.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3165489/Gardener-arr...
https://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/16209261.potato-peeler-l...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=merkel+lego&t=ffab&ia=images&iax=i...
Or is it 'Legos' ?
'Never, ever "Legos."' - LEGO
https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912?lan...
The term "merkel lego" is politically charged but a decent way to find pictures of the stackable variety.
Las Vegas is in the process of installing 5,000 bollards after some stoned lady drove onto a sidewalk and over a bunch of people.
They're designed to stop a full sized pickup truck going 55mph (90kph).
https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/c...
You obviously haven't been to Manhattan lately.
First, retailers, particularly larger ones, have occasionally suffered a form of burglary in which the thief drives a vehicle through the glass facade (and perhaps metal security barrier) in order to gain access, loads up valuable goods quickly, and flees before the police or guards arrive (since this method is not exactly subtle and invariably results in a response). As a result, large retailers almost invariably have bollards or columns to prevent vehicles reaching the glass entrance. Target very visibly uses 'big red balls' while Wal-Mart is fond of a simple concrete bollard with a blue plastic cover. This form of theft was never extremely common, but the bollards are cheap to install and require virtually no maintenance, so it makes perfect sense. Because this is mostly a low-risk anti-theft situation, the barriers used are usually of simple designs (concrete-filled pipe) and would not withstand a large vehicle.
Second are counter-terrorist precautions. While effective against ramming attacks (e.g. driving into a crowd at speed as has happened several times recently in Europe and Great Britain), counter-terrorist ram barriers are usually intended primarily to prevent a car-bomb reaching an occupied area. They are not actually so much a post-9/11 precaution in the US but have actually been commonly installed since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, after which the federal government took significant measures to restrict vehicle access near facilities and private industry promptly followed.
These are intended against a higher-cost event and more motivated actors and so they are usually much more heavily engineered, and may use rather interesting designs since they are often retrofit. However, in new construction it is preferred to integrate the vehicle (and potentially blast) barrier into the larger landscape design so that it is more aesthetically pleasing. This is often done by designing a system of landscape boulders, street furniture, retaining walls, and steep berms into the landscape around a building which (possibly non-obviously) form a continuous wall to vehicles. Nearly any federal office building or courthouse designed since 1995 demonstrates this technique.
Counter-terrorist vehicle protections are becoming a standard part of the design of facilities that will attract crowds, especially when they are perceived as "public places." Such protections may be a requirement for government funding and incentives and liability insurance. And, ultimately, they are not very expensive in the scope of a large project, and may be funded by grants in the case of retrofit.
isn't a non-obviousness a bad idea? while I understand that it is motivated by aestetics but then you loose the deterrence factor?