LIFE-SAVING DESIGN
What can be done to prevent ‘hostile vehicle attacks’
Back in February 1997, new measures were announced aimed at keeping tourists and other people who had no business being on Parliament Hill from parking near the Centre Block.
A week earlier, a Jeep had crashed right into the doors of the House of Commons. The plans were aimed not only at making Parliament Hill a more pleasant place for pedestrians, but also at reducing the chances of a terrorist attack. In the words of Robert Marleau, then the clerk of the House of Commons, the safety measures were “soft on people, hard on cars.”
More than 20 years ago, security experts were already painfully aware that vehicles, whether carrying explosives or not, could be lethal in a crowd.
“Soft on people, hard on cars” is still the mantra.
The “hostile vehicle attack” in Toronto this week was the 11th worldwide in the last two years to incur mass casualties. Security experts are grappling with ideas to make public spaces open and friendly to people, while discouraging random attacks. Good design creates barriers between vehicles and people. At their best, well-designed barriers can act like boulders in a stream, funnelling people and vehicles away from one another in subtle but effective ways.
But in the end, security experts say, the most effect way to prevent danger is to make people aware that they are responsible for flagging anything unusual or threatening, whether it’s a Facebook post or an unattended package.
The public needs to be alert, but not alarmed, said Pierre-Yves Bourduas, a former deputy RCMP commissioner who is now president of P-Y Public Safety Management Inc.
“I call it the art of public safety. If you are alert to your environment, you’re looking, you’re observing. If you see something, you say something. If people lock themselves in their houses, it defeats the purpose.”
In Ottawa, the most visible sign that things had changed after the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. were the concrete barriers that were erected outside the U.S. embassy, later replaced by bollards. Parts of Ottawa’s downtown core have also evolved in a way that takes public security into account in far less obvious ways.
Bourduas points to the space between Ottawa city hall and the courthouse, as an example. It provides a path for pedestrians between Lisgar Street and Laurier Avenue. Slightly curved, and lined with benches, lamp posts, trees and sculptures, it is pleasant for people on foot, and obviously forbidding to vehicles.
His eye for security has also picked out potential trouble spots for a random attack in Ottawa. The number of people waiting for buses at specific downtown intersections at rush hour could be attractive to someone with harmful intent. The opening of the LRT will make Ottawa safer, he said.
If you are alert to your environment, you’re looking, you’re observing. If you see something, you say something. If people lock themselves in their houses, it defeats the purpose.