The deadly New Year’s Day truck attack in New Orleans “would have had a completely different outcome” if city officials had put out 700lb (317kg) barriers that they bought years earlier and have a track record of preventing intentional vehicle rammings, the blockades’ inventor has told the Guardian. But the city “did not have a full slate of accessories to help move and deploy” those steel Archer barriers quickly in the way they were designed to be – and how authorities elsewhere have managed to do it, Peter Whitford, the chief executive officer of the Meridian Rapid Defense Group, said