10 dead 35+ injured in New Orleans terror attack

[KMFJD]

Your own link says the FBI is investigating as a terror attack, as does every other news article.

i mean the story does change with time but initially it was

https://twitter.com/x/status/1874446344275791957

 

[alien42]

Looks like he wasn't acting alone.

New Orleans truck attack suspect: What we know about Shamsud-Din Jabbar

The suspect in a deadly attack in New Orleans has been identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S.-born citizen from Texas, according to the FBI.

abcnews.go.com

Unclear what "potential explosive devices" means. I assume we'll get more details later.

That article says IEDs and pipe bombs.

 

[WelshBloke]

i mean the story does change with time but initially it was

https://twitter.com/x/status/1874446344275791957

The term "terrorist" and "terrorism" have become totally debased recently to the point that they don't mean a lot anyway

 

[KMFJD]

The term "terrorist" and "terrorism" have become totally debased recently to the point that they don't mean a lot anyway

very true

they where impeding traffic, he's well within his rights to run them over /s

(law in question - HB383, and yes, this is not applicable in this situation)

 

[pmv]

After the growing trend of using vehicles to attack crowds, I am surprised large gatherings don't have posts or k-rail or other barriers preventing access to the streets at the time people have gathered. Local cops / security for events could easily setup the barriers for said gatherings. May be more cost prohibitive in rural settings, but there's hardly an excuse for major cities.

From The Guardian's "live" coverage:

The Associated Press has been looking into why an anti-terrorism security system designed to temporarily prevent vehicles driving through New Orleans’s French Quarter was not in operation at the time of this morning’s attack.

It found that many of the adjustable barriers at intersections in the Quarter, stainless-steel columns known as bollards, were absent because they were in the process of being replaced during a rolling maintenance program that began in November and was scheduled to be completed before the Super Bowl in the city on 9 February.

Instead, in busy times for pedestrians such as the New Year’s Day celebrations, police cruisers were positioned at entrances to the Quarter. Surveillance footage posted to X on Wednesday showed what is believed to be the suspect’s pickup truck driving past one of the police vehicles and accelerating along Bourbon Street before plowing into the crowd.

City officials have not confirmed whether the intersection at which the suspect entered the Quarter was actively under construction, or if the replacement project created a vulnerability, the AP said.

 

[Jaskalas]

Nice coverage from the Guardian.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Also—I may be wrong about this—but I wonder if these cars are harder to stop/disable by law enforcement firing towards where the engine block would normally be.

I may be late on this, but this isn't a thing in real life. You need an extraordinarily high amount of energy to disable even a boring ice engine, not the kind of things law enforcement have on hand under most circumstances. Even specialized and will planned circumstances require special hardware from a military perspective... You need anti-material systems like .50BMG to actually halt an engine, and then you still have the mass of tonnage moving forward that you aren't stopping.


There's many ways for law enforcement to actually disable an automobile and none of them are really appropriate for protecting a crowd without making the US look more like a police state.

 

[Indus]

I had no idea what Turo was..

I thought it was a town where they got a rental.

Apparently it's an app

 

[alien42]

I had no idea what Turo was..

I thought it was a town where they got a rental.

Apparently it's an app

It's essentially Airbnb for cars.

 

[Fenixgoon]

I had no idea what Turo was..

I thought it was a town where they got a rental.

Apparently it's an app

It's essentially Airbnb for cars.

the app-ificiation of car rentals and all the shenanigans that come along with a massively capitalized business shoving all the costs and risks onto individuals while hoovering in massive amounts of cash.

 

[Indus]

the app-ificiation of car rentals and all the shenanigans that come along with a massively capitalized business shoving all the costs and risks onto individuals while hoovering in massive amounts of cash.

Yeah good luck getting car insurance to pay for that..

We do not cover sub-leases/ renting to terrorists. Sorry but not sorry!

 

[brycejones]

the app-ificiation of car rentals and all the shenanigans that come along with a massively capitalized business shoving all the costs and risks onto individuals while hoovering in massive amounts of cash.

The enshitifaction continues and is accelerating

 

[alien42]

Yeah good luck getting car insurance to pay for that..

We do not cover sub-leases/ renting to terrorists. Sorry but not sorry!

Uhhh, Turo is already quite successful and has been for years. I know someone who has a fleet of 30 something luxury vehicles that are exclusively rented on Turo. As far as I understand his insurance coverage is standard auto insurance.

 

[woolfe9998]

The press keeps pitching another incident in Las Vegas as being connected to this one, but I have my doubts.

Police probe if blast at Trump hotel is linked to New Orleans attack

President Biden said "any possible connection" was being investigated, but "thus far, there is nothing to report".

www.bbc.com

So a cybertruck pulls up alongside the Trump Tower in Vegas. It contains several mortars which are used for fireworks, and some cans of fuel. It explodes, killing the driver and delivering minor injuries to seven passersby. Apparently, this rental truck was also ordered on Turo.

It reads like an accident to me. New Years, fireworks. The driver was the only one killed. Explosion wasn't big enough to cause serious problems beyond the footprint of the vehicle itself. Turo is a common way to book rentals.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Uhhh, Turo is already quite successful and has been for years. I know someone who has a fleet of 30 something luxury vehicles that are exclusively rented on Turo. As far as I understand his insurance coverage is standard auto insurance.

I have state farm and they explicitly have clauses in their policies about using personal vehicles as business vehicles for Uber, turo, etc.

 

[WelshBloke]

Uhhh, Turo is already quite successful and has been for years. I know someone who has a fleet of 30 something luxury vehicles that are exclusively rented on Turo. As far as I understand his insurance coverage is standard auto insurance.

Which is fine until you have to make a claim and they use that to deny it.

 

[Brainonska511]

the app-ificiation of car rentals and all the shenanigans that come along with a massively capitalized business shoving all the costs and risks onto individuals while hoovering in massive amounts of cash.

The enshitifaction continues and is accelerating

No one is forcing people to list their cars on Turo, and no one is forcing people to rent through Turo. If they are trying to meet their absurd monthly payments by renting on Turo, they should reevaluate their actual needs and consider a cheaper vehicle (even if it is new; you can still find vehicles new for <$30k MSRP; you don't have to spend the average new car price).

Uhhh, Turo is already quite successful and has been for years. I know someone who has a fleet of 30 something luxury vehicles that are exclusively rented on Turo. As far as I understand his insurance coverage is standard auto insurance.

My GEICO insurance specifically asks if you use your vehicle in any sort of ride/vehicle sharing, and will rightfully cancel the policy if you lie.

Considering the price of cars, insurance, repairs, and potential liability headaches, I think you'd have to be a pretty big idiot to rent your personal vehicles through such a service.

 

[Zorba]

From The Guardian's "live" coverage:

It's ridiculous that Bourbon Street isn't permanently closed to cars with proper barriers always installed.

It's also been shown at multiple events that a could police cars parked sideways won't stop people. The Oklahoma City Marathon blocks all the roads that'll have dense people at them (basically 1.5 miles from start and finish) with heavy equipment. Such as trash trucks, plows, dump trucks, etc. and they cover enough of the sidewalk that a car couldn't get through.

 

[Brainonska511]

It's ridiculous that Bourbon Street isn't permanently closed to cars with proper barriers always installed.

It's also been shown at multiple events that a could police cars parked sideways won't stop people. The Oklahoma City Marathon blocks all the roads that'll have dense people at them (basically 1.5 from start and finish) with heavy equipment. Such as trash trucks, plows, dump trucks, etc. and they cover enough of the sidewalk a car couldn't get through.

Can't put proper bollards in because people might damage their precious automobiles with reckless driving, and it's my right as an American to drive wherever I want (/s). In MA, I've seen a lot of people complain about cement barrier bike lanes such that DOT tends to stick to flexible, plastic posts that will flatten as easily as the riders they're allegedly protecting.

 

[Pens1566]

I saw a bit somewhere that NO was currently in the process of removing/replacing the bollards along part of that stretch.

 

[Zorba]

Can't put proper bollards in because people might damage their precious automobiles with reckless driving, and it's my right as an American to drive wherever I want (/s). In MA, I've seen a lot of people complain about cement barrier bike lanes such that DOT tends to stick to flexible, plastic posts that will flatten as easily as the riders they're allegedly protecting.

My friend lives in Atlanta near the Beltline (big, nice multi-use trail). Some of it is a long surface streets with K-rail especially the southern end near his house. There is a section across from the I-20 office ramp that has been freshly hit every time I'm there, usually hard enough to move it enough to block most of the path. GDOT won't stake it in, though, because that might dangerous to the people in the steel box and fuck the people without a steel box.

 

[pmv]

It's ridiculous that Bourbon Street isn't permanently closed to cars with proper barriers always installed.

It's also been shown at multiple events that a could police cars parked sideways won't stop people. The Oklahoma City Marathon blocks all the roads that'll have dense people at them (basically 1.5 miles from start and finish) with heavy equipment. Such as trash trucks, plows, dump trucks, etc. and they cover enough of the sidewalk that a car couldn't get through.

Yeah, that occurs to me every time one of these horrors occurs.

You're never going to stop or track down every psychopath who might want to kill (I tend to think in these cases the murderous anger precedes the adoption of the 'cause', and as I said with the CEO case, there's a fine/fuzzy line between terrorism and 'mental health'). But what you can do is make it physically more difficult to act on that desire. Whether that means gun-control or doing more to keep cars away from pedestrians. Seems that in this case they made some half-assed efforts to do that but didn't really try hard enough.

 

[HomerJS]

Prediction...

If perp is a person of color or Muslim Fox runs it on a 24x7 loop about rampant violent crime.

If perp is white Fox drops story within 24 hours.

 

[alien42]

Prediction...

If perp is a person of color or Muslim Fox runs it on a 24x7 loop about rampant violent crime.

If perp is white Fox drops story within 24 hours.

uhhh, we've known the perp's race (and likely religion) since yesterday, a bit late for that prediction.

see post 14 in this thread for a picture.

 

[IronWing]

Clearly, we need to deport all veterans.