Many questions are yet to be answered concerning why a 51-year-old man drove his car into pedestrians in Trier's city-centre on Tuesday 1 December. One major issues remains, however, how did he manage it?

Though traffic is unaffected and the bus lines are running as normal, for the residents of Trier life is anything but.

There is a mix of grief and fury regarding Tuesday's attack in Trier, and with five dead, and scores injured, many people are wondering how the arrested 51-year-old was apparently able to drive his vehicle into the pedestrian zone without any issue.

Trier's pedestrian zone is generally easy to reach for vehicles, mostly for residents and for delivery vehicles.

There is only one notable retractable bollard on an access road to the Kornmarkt, one of Trier's main squares.

Without the onset of the global corona pandemic, there would currently be a Christmas market on the Hauptmarkt, the Kornmarkt, the Viehmarkt, the Domfreidhof in front of the cathedral and in the city's many interlocking streets.

For the past three years, in part due to ramped-up security measures, concrete bollards and other obstacles had been erected on all access roads to protect them from vehicles.

"But without the Christmas market there was no reason for it (security measures) this year," said the mayor of Trier Wolfram Leibe on Tuesday evening. Leibe added that one cannot completely secure a city center either. "There is no such thing as absolute security."

The details surrounding the case, the man's motivation and indeed the condition of those in hospital will be updated in a separate article.