New Orleans attack a wake-up call for NYC get serious about vehicle terror

We’re nearly a decade into the age of Islamist terror via motor vehicle, beginning with the 2016 Bastille Day truck attack in Nice, France that killed 86 people.New York should be hardening vulnerable public spaces.Instead, the city relies on temporary measures and good luck — leaving us little better prepared than New Orleans.Last week’s New Year’s Bourbon Street attack, which killed 14 people, is the fault of one person: ISIS adherent Shamsud-Din Jabbar of Texas.But vehicle terrorism is a fact of modern urban life.

The New Orleans attack came two weeks after a Christmastime vehicle assault in Germany that killed five people.We’ve had other such incidents here: In 2017, an ISIS terrorist driving a rented truck killed eight people on the Hudson River bike path on Halloween.Earlier that year, a drug-crazed Memorial Day attacker (of hazy ideology — he got off due to insanity) killed a tourist when he plowed a car through Times Square.Before terrorists started moving people down, we had the risk of truck bombs, like the 1993 World Trade Center attack.Even without deadly intent, people in vehicles don’t mix with large pedestrian crowds.Just last year, an allegedly drunk driver killed four people at a July 4th barbecue downtown.In 2001, two months after 9/11, a bad driver killed seven people on a sidewalk outside Macy’s.No, we can’t prevent all terror attacks or other mass-casualty car and truck crashes.But we can be smarter: We know terrorists like to target high-profile places, such as Times Square or Bourbon Street.So in places where the city can’t practically shut down traffic — as former Mayor Rudy Giuliani did on Wall Street, permanently, after 9/11, and as Mayor Mike Bloomberg did in much of Times Square — it makes sense to separate trucks and cars from people.That’s why everyone is asking the obvious question about New Orleans.New Orleans knew that Bourbon Street was at risk, which is why it had previously deployed bollards t...