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There is an air of paranoia unique to the UK with these things. Not sure I have ever seen an anti-ramming device outside a few poles out fron of pawn and liquor
by Jamwinner 7y ago
There is an air of paranoia unique to the UK with these things. Not sure I have ever seen an anti-ramming device outside a few poles out fron of pawn and liquor shops in especially bad areas. Is the situation that bad to warrant what seem like military barriers? I am at a loss.
- goda90 7y agoI feel like bollards have an amazing effectiveness to intrusiveness ratio. They stop people from using vehicles to attack lots of people, but they don't really interfere with day to day living, or violate any privacy.
- chachachoney 7y agoThey are another incredibly expensive (security) theater prop.
- harimau777 7y agoCan you elaborate on this? It seems like they would be relatively inexpensive and effective at preventing a type of attack that would otherwise be fairly simple. That being the case I don't see much reason not to use them.
- namibj 7y agoGetting a 40ton truck isn't hard, and those are very difficult to shield against. Most deployments don't resist them. 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.
- chachachoney 7y agoUsing NYC as an example, how many casualties (which would have been prevented by bollards) happened before bollards became a fixture?
- jethro_tell 7y agoMuch like the only useful change in airport security. A better cockpit door and a protocol for it's use.
- aphextim 7y ago>They stop people from using vehicles to attack lots of people. 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.
- reaperducer 7y agoThey've been around for a long time. I fractured my knee on one in Brussels in the 99's that looked like they'd been there for decades, if not centuries. 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.
- aphextim 7y agoI can see that, much like in the USA there were a ton of companies trying to profit off of the school shootings offering things like clear backpacks for every student, metal detectors at every entrance, video surveillance etc. 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.
- jwalton 7y ago> They stop people from using vehicles to attack lots of people 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.
- tobylane 7y agoI’m not sure it’s paranoia, it’s pedestrian protection. Various attacks in London, Berlin and other places have been trucks driven onto pedestrian areas. Sometimes they can be minor, for instance the road going north from Covent Garden.
- thrill 7y agoA threat doesn't have to be an intentional act.
- slovenlyrobot 7y agoA long history of terrorist attacks, e.g. bombing the hotel the prime minister was sleeping in at the time (1984). More recently there have been many van attacks mostly by Muslim extremists, and that's what the barriers are about
- freeflight 7y ago> mostly by Muslim extremists 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-attacks-a-social-virus-spread-by-media-networks https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/society/18798/rise-in-vehicle-at... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack#List_of_non-terrorist_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack#List_of...
- avar 7y agoHow are you tallying up your [1] source? 4/4 by my count meet the criteria GP pointed out, 3/4 if you insist on splitting out "revenge for military action in the middle-East" as having nothing to do with it, which is a stretch.
- the-dude 7y agoFrom [0] : "For example, they depict how the 2017 Finsbury Park Mosque ramming attack was conducted by a man who had been motivated to act by the ISIS-inspired London Bridge ramming attack 16 days earlier. Subsequently, within six days of the Finsbury Park attack, two other similar ramming attacks against Muslims had occurred: one in North London and another in front of a Mosque in France." You see, nothing to do with Muslims! It must be social contagion instead.
- vonmoltke 7y ago> There is an air of paranoia unique to the UK with these things. You obviously haven't been to Manhattan lately.
- moftz 7y agoI see them out front of big box stores but I have a feeling it's more for pedestrian safety from inattentive drivers accidentally hitting the gas instead of the brake than preventing people from doing a robbery.
- jccooper 7y agoVehicular smash and grabs certainly happen, and I suspect that's the reason for most store bollards. Going through my local shopping center, the grocery store has a couple that are clearly for pedestrian protection, the pet store don't have them, and the electronics, clothing, and toy stores have bollards only useful for security. (Far from the curb and in front of windows.) That seems to be pretty consistent on the value/density spectrum to me. Here's an Apple store without bollards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od5YG6kBrJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od5YG6kBrJs
- ChrisSD 7y agoFor London I started seeing more barriers in the wake of two similar vehicle attacks in 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Westminster_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Westminster_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack
- the-dude 7y agoEurope is full of 'Merkel Lego' these days : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=merkel+lego&t=ffab&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=merkel+lego&t=ffab&ia=images&iax=i... Or is it 'Legos' ?
- bonestamp2 7y ago> Or is it 'Legos' ? 'Never, ever "Legos."' - LEGO https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912?lang=en https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912?lan...
- egdod 7y agoYou can already get arrested there for carrying a pocket knife or a screwdriver. Paranoia is the order of the day. At least these do some actual good.
- M2Ys4U 7y agoThere's an epidemic of knife crime in the UK at the moment. I'd say prohibiting carrying a knife without a good reason is a good thing.
- tristor 7y agoPoe’s Law is in effect. I can’t tell if you’re actually serious. A pocket knife carried by the average Joe harms nobody, so prohibiting carrying it is absolutely beyond reason.
- loriverkutya 7y agoThe 67 victim stabbed and dead only this year would have different opinion.
- tristor 7y agoWhat does that have to do with an average Joe and his pocket knife? 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.
- jdietrich 7y agoExcept that the law can't usefully distinguish between the "average Joe" and a teenager on their way to a gang fight. 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.
- Spooky23 7y agoVehicles the most accessible tool for lunatics to cause or deliver something to cause mass casualties in Europe.
- Quarrelsome 7y agothere's been a few incidents with vehicles mowing down pedestrians. I wouldn't label it paranoia. I'm personally impressed they've managed it without having to make the place _look_ threatening.
- jcrawfordor 7y agoThere are two major classes of applications for vehicle ram barriers. Both are common in the United States where I live, although the latter has become significantly more common over the past two decades as vehicle attacks have gained a higher profile: 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.
- lmm 7y agoMuch like generals prepare to fight the last war, security forces prepare to prevent the last terror attack. The most high-profile recent attack in the UK was someone driving a van into a few people near London Bridge. 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.
- wongarsu 7y agoThe entrances to most pedestrian zones in Germany used to be guarded by thin metal poles if at all, now nearly all of them have solid concrete blocks, clearly intended as anti-ramming devices. The term "merkel lego" is politically charged but a decent way to find pictures of the stackable variety.
- reaperducer 7y agoThere is an air of paranoia unique to the UK with these things 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/clark-county/3000-more-steel-bollards-to-be-installed-along-las-vegas-strip-1671600/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/c...
- mturmon 7y agoRelated: the Santa Monica farmer's market crash that killed 10 and injured 63, probably due to a confused driver. Bollards have since been installed there. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Farmers_Market_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Farmers_Market_cr...)