Vehicles crashing into outdoor dining or curbside dining spots have become more and more common as more and more permitted and un-permitted restaurants open up seating areas closer and closer to traffic.  Encouraged by cities and business districts eager to get pedestrians and patrons back after lockdown, we have seen all sorts of set ups and all sorts of dangerous locations spring up in cities large and small.

Tragically, the increase in outdoor dining has brought with it an increase in vehicles colliding with seating areas and seated diners.  We have seen a number of such accidents since June -- most of them preventable.  Most recently, a driver trying to park his SUV crashed into outdoor dining tents set up outside of the Dynasty Chinese Seafood Restaurant in San Jose California.  7 were injured, and one killed.

As an expert at preventing deliberate vehicle attacks and accidental vehicle incursions, and as an someone who testifies as an expert witness when vehicles crash into storefronts, restaurants, and outdoor dining areas, I can see that the restaurant owners failed to make safety a priority for patrons -- they were completely unprotected.  But the shopping center owners should have exercised control, and mall management should have taken immediate steps to require that any such outdoor facilities should be made safe for diners.  All of these -- the restaurant, the property owner, and mall management -- FAILED the customers in those tents.  Safety cannot be delegated -- one or all three should have consulted with an expert or asked for a review by the city or by the police department.  Seven injured, one killed -- foreseeable accident, preventable accident.

The rush to reopen restaurants has resulted in large numbers of documented cases where vehicles have crashed into outdoor dining and curbside dining spots in New York and a half a dozen other states.  We have been tracking these incidents and including them in the Storefront Safety Council database.  I was given a chance to offer a viewpoint about how the Covid pandemic has changed how property owners use their parking lots, how stores and restaurants use the sidewalk and curbs right in front of their entries, and how Big Box retailers and others have had to adapt to offer curbside delivery, drop off/pickup, and so many other forms of physical distancing.

Thanks to Kim Fernandez of Parking & Mobility Magazine for the chance to contribute and to post that viewpoint here.







IPMI Blog

 Parking Lots, Public Spaces, Social Distancing, and Safety

By Rob Reiter

Six months into dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans are finding ways to keep commerce moving amid many restrictions on use, occupancy, and physical spacing.  In addition, the sharp drop in the use of public transportation has increased the pressures for re-purposing some very valuable real estate — curbs, parking lots, and parking structures.

Restaurants are expanding out onto sidewalks and curbside locations all over the United States; more than 8,000 permits have been issued in New York City alone.  Exposure of diners and waitstaff to passing vehicles has already been documented with security camera footage from more than a half-dozen injury accidents since late June.

Restaurants are also expanding into their off-street parking areas–physical distancing requirements along with the attraction of fresh air and sunshine for people who have been staying home for so long have made such arrangements very popular. Some restaurants are handling this better than others.

Retailers of all stripes have jumped onto the curbside bandwagon at shopping malls, regional centers, and basic strip centers.  Companies providing services for retailers report doubling and re-doubling of retailers offering it along with customers taking advantage of the convenience and safety that the service offers.

I expect that 2021 will see the start of a national campaign where “Share the Curb” will become a battle zone between restaurants, retailers, rideshare providers, and local merchants like salons and small retailers who want to keep parking near their stores convenient for their customers.

Read more about what this means for the parking industry and why safety is a big concern in this month’s issue of Parking & Mobility magazine.

Rob Reiter is co-founder of the Storefront Safety Council

 I know that this is a blog about Storefront Safety, and I know that many readers would be unaware that a good part of my life has been spent protecting people and property and government facilities from criminals and terrorists.  It is one of the reasons that I know so much about preventing low speed crashes at storefronts -- if you can stop a terrorist driving a 15,000LB truck filled with explosives and coming at you at 50 MPH, well, it is not hard to figure out how to stop a Toyota at 20 MPH.

So it is not such a departure for me professionally to call your attention to the latest "Terror By Vehicle" attack, this time in London.  And remember -- if a terrorist of any persuasion decides to take out as many people as he can, retail shops, offices, shopping malls and pedestrian areas will be obvious soft targets.

These attacks are NOT unexpected and are in fact quite predictable. Israel has suffered these attacks for several years. "Crude but effective" works great for terrorists.  Last year a Honda sedan was used to attack a group of students at Ohio State University, and the casualty count for the Berlin and Nice attacks came to nearly 100 dead and just under 500 injured.  Today, in London, another 3 dead and twenty injured.

The newspapers are trying their best to cover the story.  Lots of details will be coming to light in the next 24 hours.  But note this well:  Anyone who thinks that America will not be seeing this sort of "Terror By Truck" is in for a very sad realization.

Here is an excellent article from The Washington Post, which gives additional information about past events as well as coverage about this incident in London:
www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/22/as-the-london-attacks-show-the-sedate-sedan-can-be-turned-into-a-deadly-unpredictable-weapon/?utm_term=.f3a47c1e4971#comments

How ramming cars into crowds became a major terror tactic
By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Amanda Erickson March 22 at 4:27 PM

A member of the public is treated by emergency services near Westminster Bridge and Parliament on March 22 in London. An assailant drove into people on the bridge and later fatally stabbed a police officer. (Carl Court/Getty Images)LONDON — Wednesday's attack in London involved one of terrorists' new favorite tactics: driving a vehicle into a crowd.

In July, a terrorist in Nice drove a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera, killing 84. And in December, a man rammed a vehicle into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12.
In London, a vehicle plowed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, leaving at least two dead and 20 injured. The attacker then stabbed a police officer at the gates of Parliament before being gunned down.
[Attacker kills 3, injures 20 in London; terrorism suspected.]
Specialists say this latest incident is in line with an emerging model of strikes involving simple, everyday instruments but carried out in locations sure to draw global attention.
“Terrorists rely on a lot of people watching — it can be even better than having a lot of people dead,” said Frank Foley, a scholar of terrorism at the Department of War Studies at King's College London. “This person appears to have chosen relatively rudimentary weapons, and there was no explosion as far as we can tell. But they've attacked a very prominent target, Parliament and Westminster Bridge, and so they've immediately flooded the media. Every television station in Europe and America will be carrying this tonight and tomorrow.”
Experts on terrorism in the U.K. said Wednesday's incident also marked a departure from Britain's relative success in fending off such attacks, particularly compared to neighbors France and Belgium.
“Britain has actually been reasonably quiet,” said Steve Hewitt, who studies surveillance and counterterrorism at the University of Birmingham. Notable exceptions, he said, include the so-called “7/7” suicide bomb attacks in 2005 in central London, the murder of British Army soldier Lee Rigby in 2013 and the murder of Labor MP Jo Cox last year.
Hewitt suggested that the strength of British defense owed to the expertise of the police and security services, as well as long-term experience dealing with terrorism, going back to the activities of the Irish Republican Army. “It's hard to make a claim that this represents an escalation,” he said. “It's a fairly rare occurrence in the U.K. It's actually somewhat surprising it hasn’t happened more before.”
Strict regulation of firearms in Britain — as compared to the United States, where such attacks have often unfolded at the end of a barrel of a gun — lowers the scale of violence that is possible, Hewitt said. “We live in a country where there are tight gun-control laws, as opposed to in the U.S., where a lone individual acquiring a weapon often legally can cause major death and destruction very quickly,” Hewitt said.
Of course, though, the risk of relatively low-impact assaults is always present, and immensely difficult to mitigate. “How do you stop someone driving down the street who just decides to drive their car into pedestrians?” he asked.
The answer to that question has become increasingly vital in the past few years. as terrorists have begun to shift tactics. In the past, the focus was on large-scale, spectacular attacks that involved scores of people and meticulous training. More recently though, groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda have called for more spontaneous acts of terror by any means necessary. And these groups have highlighted the potential of automobiles not as car bombs, packed with detectable explosives, but as unpredictable ramming weapons.

As far back as 2010, al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch encouraged the use of trucks as a weapon. Inspire, its official magazine, ran a piece headlined, “The Ultimate Mowing Machine,” which called on followers to use a truck as a “mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.” The three-page article includes tips on maximizing casualties, guidance on the best vehicles to use and a photo of an American Thanksgiving parade, describing it as “an excellent target.”
In a 2014 video message, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the chief spokesman for the Islamic State, told listeners, “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him.”
A November 2016 issue of the Islamic State's Rumiyah magazine extolled the virtues of using large load-bearing trucks to cause a “bloodbath.”
“We have reached a stage where terrorist organizations want to create an environment in which they could hit anywhere at any time, using whatever method,” a European security official told my colleagues last year. “The videos and messages against France and other European countries have been published in various social-media platforms, with the message to ‘use whatever to kill, even cars.’ ”
Amanda Erickson reported from Washington.

Goleta California in October.  Kettering Ohio and Encinitas California this week.  Three storefront crashes at Trader Joe's stores in three months.  For a chain that values and promotes its image of a happy team working to serve happy communities, these three crashes (after more than a half dozen over the last three years) show a large gap between what gets said and what gets done at Trader Joe's.

Since announcing their comprehensive storefront protection program called “Universal Parameters for Site Safety Low Speed Barriers" in 2015, Trader Joe's has suffered a number of additional crashes and suffered millions of dollars in judgements and settlements stemming from storefront crashes.  Apparently, progress has been very slow on their protection program, because none of the photos of Goleta, Kettering, or Encinitas show any sort of protection for pedestrians, customers, and employees.

The Grocery Industry has been ON NOTICE for years that this problem exists -- insurers, risk managers, and safety folks like the Storefront Safety Council have all documented the problem.  Programs that have been announced and/or already underway by companies in the grocery industry are being praised and recognized by many, including our own Storefront Safety Initiative. On that topic, please see www.storefrontsafetyinitiative.org

With something more than 60 vehicle-into-building crashes per day, storefront crashes are a national problem.  They will not stop by themselves.  If a company announces a safety program and does a poor job of follow-through, what is the message they are sending to employees and customers?  Ask Cumberland Farms, who lost a Massachusetts case last year that will cost them several tens of millions of dollars in damages for a single wrongful death of a customer.

Three accidents in three months.  It doesn't have to be this way.

A Trader Joe's grocery store suffered a serious injury crash on 8 October.  A vehicle operated by an elderly driver crashed into the storefront -- the cause of the accident is as yet unknown.  However, the lack of protection from such accidents is VERY WELL KNOWN.  A rash of similar crashes caused Trader Joe's to initiate "Universal Parameters For Site Safety" which includes the installation of barriers to protect storefront from oncoming vehicles.

Clearly -- no effective barriers were installed at the Trader Joe's in Goleta:
http://www.keyt.com/traffic/shopper-suffers-serious-injuries-after-vehicle-crashes-into-goleta-grocery-store/109090548 

Trader Joe's has paid large damage awards in previous accidents, and has initiated a program to prevent such incidents from happening again.  But good intentions are not the same as good progress -- we will be continuing to monitor their progress.  Sadly, we just have to keep watching the news to see how they are doing.

September is National Preparedness Month  -- it has been designated by the Department of Homeland Security as a time for civilians, government, businesses, and institutions to join together to start planning to prevent tragedy and catastrophe BEFORE disasters occur. 

The best way for any business to prepare for the disaster of a vehicle crashing into a building is to prevent the crash in the first place.  Planning and best practices and simple efforts can pay off in the form or decades of safe operation and zero vehicle disasters at your business or property.

For more from DHS and the full story on how businesses should prepare for disasters can be found HERE


Illinois, Texas, California, Ohio.  Kentucky, North Carolina, and Indiana.  There is almost no state in the U.S. where gun shops have not been under attack -- and almost no state where any mandated preventive measures of significance is underway to stop the attacks.

For a chronicle of just some recent theft-by-vehicle cases at gun shops, please take a look at our Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/ramraidthefts/

Here is the length that one store owner in Rocklin California went to in order to prevent thieves from ramming vehicles into his store:

These Crash & Grab ramraids are dangerous, they are costly, and they result in guns and ammunition available on the street to people who would not legally be able to purchase them.  At a time when gun crime is highly visible and crimes against police becoming more and more of a concern, the lack of coordinated action by the ATF, insurance underwriters, store owners, and local law enforcement is baffling.

Defending storefronts (and back entrances) is simple and does not need to be very expensive.  Two years ago, ASTM announced the completion of a new test standard (F-3016) which is used to test and verify the effectiveness of any kind of barrier subjected to a 30MPH impact from a 5000LB vehicle.  Such bollards or barriers would be perfectly capable of preventing vehicle-into-building thefts such as we are seeing now in these sorts of cases.

Why hasn't the retail firearms industry taken this up?  I have not seen anything from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (http://www.nssf.org) despite more than two years of communication on my part.  I have not seen anything from the American Firearms Retailers Association (http://www.theafra.org/) or even the NRA.  Local law enforcement bears the brunt of the crime AND the consequences of guns on the street illegally, and are limited to action in their own communities.  As for the insurance companies and the ATF -- I guess we will need to wait for information from them before we have an answer to why they remain in the background.

Crash & Grab ramraids at gun shops are foreseeable, they are predictable, and they are preventable.  I think it is past time to be increasing prevention and increase safety for everyone.

AB-2161, written and championed by California State Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-20), passed the California Assembly and Senate with no dissenting votes, and was signed into law July 22 by Governor Jerry Brown. The new law makes California the first state in the U.S. to encourage through statute the use of protective safety barriers at vulnerable locations including parking lots, retail centers, office buildings and restaurants.

The law "provides that the use of certain vehicle barriers at a commercial property may be considered by insurers as safety devices that qualify for a discount on the owner's insurance premiums," explained Storefront Safety Council Co-Founder Rob Reiter. "Prior to adoption of the appropriate standards by the California Building Standards Commission, the new law defines an appropriate barrier as a device 'that is installed to protect persons located within, in, or on the property of, buildings, or to protect pedestrians, from collisions into those buildings by motor vehicles'."

Assemblyman Quirk
Assemblyman Quirk worked on the bill for two years, with support from The Storefront Safety Council and many stakeholders, and with staff support from Legislative Assistant Miranda Flores in the 2016 term and from Dr. Scott Sellars, 2014-2015 Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the California State Legislature, during the 2015 term. The full text of the bill and the legislative counsel's digest is available online, and is reprinted below:

The Storefront Safety Council applauds the hard work of Assemblyman Quirk and his staff.  This important legislation sets the pace for the rest of the nation, costs taxpayers nothing, and will help guide standards and building codes in California and nationally in the coming months and years.  The use of discounts as an incentive to property owners and businesses will encourage adoption of these safety measures even for older properties that want to reduce liability risks today and amortize savings over longer timelines.


Assembly Bill No. 2161
CHAPTER 73

An act to add Chapter 6 (commencing with Section 11895) to Part 3 of Division 2 of the Insurance Code, relating to parking lots.

[Approved by Governor July 22, 2016. Filed with Secretary of State July 22, 2016.]

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 2161, Quirk. Parking lots: design: insurance discount.
Existing law provides that building standards shall be filed by the California Building Standards Commission with the Secretary of State and codified only after they have been approved by the commission. Existing law regulates the issuance and renewal of liability insurance policies in this state.
This bill would authorize an insurer to consider the installation of vehicle barriers as a safety measure and would authorize an insurer to provide or offer a discount on the property owner’s insurance covering damage or loss to the covered commercial property or liability arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of the commercial property relative to the reduced risk of installation of the barriers. The bill would require that any discounts be determined to be actuarially sound and approved by the Insurance Commissioner prior to their use.



BILL TEXT
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

• SECTION 1. Chapter 6 (commencing with Section 11895) is added to Part 3 of Division 2 of the Insurance Code, to read:
  CHAPTER 6. Commercial Property Parking Lots: Vehicle Barrier Discount
  11895. (a) An insurer may consider the installation of vehicle barriers as a safety measure and may provide or offer a discount on the property owner’s insurance covering damage or loss to the covered commercial property or liability arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of the commercial property relative to the reduced risk to the property as a result of installation of the barriers if the discount provided or offered is provided or offered consistent with Article 10 (commencing with Section 1861.01) of Chapter 9 of Part 2 of Division 1.
  (b) For the purposes of this section, a vehicle barrier is a safety device that meets, at a minimum, the vehicle impact protection standards as provided by the State Fire Marshal and adopted by the California Building Standards Commission and that is installed to protect persons located within, in, or on the property of, buildings, or to protect pedestrians, from collisions into those buildings by motor vehicles.
  (c) Any discounts on insurance provided in accordance with this section shall be determined to be actuarially sound and approved by the commissioner prior to their use.

I am not a lawyer, but I am very troubled by something that I think should be addressed by firearms retailers and local law enforcement agencies.

Crash & Grab ramraids are very common thefts in the United States.  Hundreds if not thousands of them occur every single week.  Very often, the targets are cell phones at electronics stores, ATM machines at convenience stores, high end designer goods at retail stores, and of course cash and jewelry.

Now if such thefts occur at these types of stores, the effects are pretty limited;  some company will deliver a new ATM machine, more iPhones will arrive via UPS, and some folks will get a great deal on stolen handbags on eBay.  

But what if the successful thieves make off with a carload of guns?

Please take a look at the photo above -- it shows the storefront of a firearms store in Rocklin California, which is quite near Sacramento.  How can a gun store that calls itself The Gun Vault have ABSOLUTELY NO PROTECTION WHATSOEVER against thieves who crashed in through the front door using nothing bigger or more powerful than -- wait for it -- a 1998 Nissan Maxima?????????????

See the local coverage from the local ABC news station:
http://www.abc10.com/news/local/thieves-crash-into-rocklin-gun-store-steal-cache-of-firearms/164083091

This is irresponsible -- that storefront could have been protected for less than the cost of the doors that now have to be replaced. And now an "undisclosed number" of pistols are out on the street.

Like I said -- I am not a lawyer.  But if those guns are used in a crime, and they are traced back to this incident, is the store owner's failure to take very simple and affordable steps to secure his storefront against such a common crime going to be something that results in a claim against the store?

People -- you never want to be the softest target on the block.  Especially if you are going to call your business The Gun Vault.  This was a foreseeable event and the failure to protect the storefront now puts the public and police officers at increased risks.

Another car crashes into another grocery store......and once again, another grocery store with no protective barriers sacrifices pedestrians and customer and employees who might be grabbing a shopping cart or entering or exiting through one of the doors.  In this accident in Brick Township in New Jersey, two pedestrians were injured when a vehicle driven by an 88 year-old  lost control while coming down the drive aisle car aimed directly at the store.  The photo above shows the result -- except for the two injured pedestrians, who were transported to hospitals, one by medevac flight.  Photo and great coverage from Shorebeat.com HERE

Now you may say that this was a fluke accident, except that the Storefront Safety Council has documented hundreds of such crashes and has raised awareness of the risks to the public that the grocery industry (and the property owners who build and own these buildings and centers) have for the most part simply tolerated.

In addition, this accident was not a fluke at all -- a quick review of this photo I took off of Google Earth clearly shows that any vehicle driving in the parking lot to park in any of the spaces in this particular drive aisle is aimed directly at the ShopRite store.  ShopRite should know better -- after all, they have been defendants in a number of cases like this one over the years.  You would think taking action to improve safety would be much cheaper than paying out injury claims over and over again....

So three weeks after the last blog post about the grocery industry being ON NOTICE, here is another one -- because these accidents just keep happening and the inaction shows that the industry as a whole has elected to ignore this known hazardous condition to persist.  For a link to our previous Grocery Industry blog post (and the post before that one!) you will find it HERE.

There are better designs for parking lots, for traffic flows, for storefront alignments and construction, and for simple and effective barriers.  Twenty accidents PER DAY in the convenience store / small market portion of the grocery industry alone.  Hundreds more per year throughout the rest of the industry. 

Oh -- I had said there were TWO crashes.  Same day, same result.  Different circumstances.  But this accident was in a location where security camera video was available. The video will show you what the previous story did not -- it sucks to be inside a store when a driver crashes through the front door.  Story and video HERE

As we always note -- it doesn't have to be this way.