This Is the Inconvenient Truth About Terrorism

What would you do if you were strolling on a beautiful seaside promenade on a humid summer's evening, perhaps with your children, maybe your partner, when you saw from the corner of your eye a huge truck being driven onto an area reserved for pedestrians, knocking people down like ninepins? You'd wonder.

A shock turned to panic, I think, whether this was an accident, a vehicle out of control.

But then you'd notice, if you had long enough, that the lorry, for all its size, still capable of touching 60 miles an hour and zigzagging from side to side, was being deliberately aimed at pedestrians, pedestrians like you and your loved ones.

In my previous life as a foreign correspondent, I found it impossible not to consider these nightmare scenarios, for they were real, they happened, and I was sent to cover them.

The one I'm talking about happened almost exactly a decade ago on the French Riviera.

It left 86 people dead, at least a dozen of them were children, and more than 450 people injured, many of them with very serious crush injuries.

The driver, a radical jihadist, was shot dead on the promenade, the English promenade as it's called, in Nice.

This is how these attacks often end.