or an American from Texas to do it.

I believe they had some kind of barriers which had been taken down for repair or something. I honestly feel like cities should have been conscious of this.

lots of big pickup trucks in America. It can happen anywhere.

I'm uneasy in big crowds for other reasons. But the risk of a truck ramming into a crowd is yet another thing to worry about.

One is ICE.

The other is EV.

The EV version weighs something like 30% more than the ICE version.

The rental chosen by the killer, who may have been a fanatic but wasn't entirely stupid, was the ICE version.

The more mass at a given speed, the harder it is to stop. I mean, high school physics kids have learned this since I was in HS physics in '75. If I wanted to smash crap with a vehicle, I'd go for heavy.

As a bonus, if you damage the battery just right you can get it to catch on fire--and battery fires are hard to extinguish because those Li+ cells want to release their energy. So there's always that. I wonder if his Air BnB had a charging station or if he'd charged it recently.

Where did you see that it wasn't the EV version?

They could have had trash trucks or other large trucks to block the ends of the street and the sidewalk. If they had known.

The new governor took office Jan 2024 and sent state police into New Orleans to fight crime.

After tons of PR about how crime had been eliminated they forgot to do their job.

He took the authority to send police, he didn’t take responsibility for success, just TV coverage for sending them.

His first mission in 2024 was to send National Guard troops to babysit Gov Abbott of Texas at the Mexico border—800 miles away from Louisiana.

New Orleans could’ve used those troops and expertise. There’s danger in Louisiana. The most dangerous place is between Gov. Jeff Landry and a TV camera.

This wasn't a decision by the NOPD. It was done by the NOHSEP.

Unless you want the governor to take full control over all preparations for everything in NOLA because you think the mayor and civilian city government there are so incompetent that a (R) governor can do better and must do more than send in some state troopers to help patrol.

Personally, I think the police probably did okay. (Although some are criticizing them because they shot the killer when video shows they didn't need to; a police review cleared them and properly so, I think. The only drawback is that they can't interrogate him and find out if he had contacts in Egypt or Montreal, where he'd visited in the previous year.)

Any where a pedestrian could be hit by a vehicle, hence practically everywhere.

Bourbon Street, a few other places where tourists gather.

But yes, it's easy to Monday morning quarterback and say coulda shoulda woulda. People intent on creating chaos find ways.

In my brain, I'm wondering if several rows of of regular cinderblocks laid out on a road strategically in a grid would serve to stop or slow a speeding vehicle. They're not huge, but seems they would act like caltrops and cause axle and tire damage if someone tried to speed through them.

The NOLA leadership should be fired for their utter incompetence. The deaths are on their heads.