The short answer is, “YES”!
There are two reasons vehicles run over people. One unintentional, such as, a drunk driver or someone not paying attention and running up onto a sidewalk, and the other, a little more sinister – purposeful. In this case, someone uses the vehicle as a killing machine. Both are criminal activity and while we will never be able to stop it completely there is something we can do. People will continue to drive drunk and those with ill-intent will use whatever they can find as weapons. Unfortunately, there are just too many forms of criminal activity that a dedicated bad-actor can take and too many soft targets or victims.
Over the course of the last few years, terrorist tactics have evolved to the point that low sophistication attacks are prevalent and have become the “norm”. The events in Nice, London, Stockholm, Berlin, and Edmonton are just the beginning. There will be others unless we start thinking about high occupancy built-up spaces in a different way.
So with that in mind, I suggest we concentrate our efforts on reducing the effects of this type of criminal activity. If we concentrate on reducing the effects instead of the why, we might actually be able to achieve some level of victory.