To learn more about the Storefront Safety Initiative and the Storefront Safety Council, please click one of the links below
In 2002 I began working with companies who were active in the post-9/11 rush to protect government buildings, military bases, and vital infrastructure from terrorist attacks. This was important work, and the new regulations from the Department of Homeland Security caused a rush of high-security projects to protect all manner of potential terrorist targets – government buildings, airports, embassies, power plants, military bases, shopping malls, and so on.
Much of this work still continues to this day and is ongoing because terrorist threats – in America and around the world –are very real.
What highlighted this realization for me occurred in July of 2003 at a busy Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. A 4500-pound Buick driven by an 86-year-old man became a weapon of mass destruction, killing 10 people and injuring 63. The driver managed to mow down vendors and shoppers and tourists for two and a half blocks — with nothing to stop him but a few wooden signs and some plastic fence. Shortly after this incident I was contacted by the press and by attorneys who asked if I could help them to understand how this might have been prevented.
Since these events, I have become an expert in vehicle incursion accidents; I have studied how frequently they occur, their common causes, and the most frequent design or construction failures which lead to them. I have in the last decade worked closely with people in government, industry, academia, and the military to understand the depth of the problem and the day-to-day cost in damages, lost productivity, medical costs, workman’s compensation claims, and so on. As a part of this effort I have worked to design, test, manufacture, distribute, specify, and sell thousands of bollards, barriers, and pedestrian safety systems which are now protecting people and property on several continents.
At least 100 times per per day, a car crashes through the doors, windows, and walls of a commercial or public building somewhere in America. That’s about one accident every 15 minutes. Our database of documented accidents is now over 25,000. Almost every one of these accidents could have been prevented for just a few thousand dollars invested in better planning and simple preventive barriers.
People are injured, lives are lost and it doesn’t have to be be this way.
That’s why I do what I do.