On Monday afternoon, on one of the busiest pedestrian streets in Leipzig - the Grimmaische Strasse - a white Volkswagen Taigo drove at 80-100 kilometres an hour through a crowd of people on a shopping run. The car came out of Augustusplatz, entered the pedestrian zone, and ploughed on until bollards stopped it. Two dead, many injured. The police arrived quickly - the driver gave himself up without resistance.

He has been identified - Jeffrey K., 33 years old, a hall janitor, married with one child. Local residents also knew him as a boxing trainer at a Leipzig club. The picture of a man who doesn't fit the stereotype of a terrorist. Police sources claim the connection was personal - apparently a quarrel preceded it. Another claim - he had psychological problems.

Police helicopters landed on Augustusplatz. Around a dozen ambulances were dispatched. A crisis centre was set up in the neighbouring Gewandhaus concert hall. About an hour after the attack, the mayor of Leipzig Burkhard Jung confirmed the news everyone was afraid to hear - a 63-year-old woman and a 77-year-old man, both German citizens, had died.

For Germany, this is yet another vehicle attack within less than a year. Magdeburg, Munich, Mannheim - all of them have had similar incidents, each with a different background. Some were politically motivated, some were the work of lone attackers with mental problems, some remain unexplained. What's common - the pedestrian zone is no longer a safe category. Nowhere in Europe is it, but in Germany - which has cultivated for decades a culture of open access to public spaces - this is a heavy political blow.

The questions that will be asked in the coming days will be the usual and predictable ones - whether a political motive can be ruled out, whether a terrorist network is being investigated, whether the psychological problems were known to the authorities. Investigators in Leipzig haven't yet confirmed whether this was a deliberate attack or a criminal act different from terror. But 100 km/h in a pedestrian zone is too much for an accident.

For the Balkans, this is another signal of how European cities are changing. People in Skopje, Sofia and Belgrade got used to seeing police with automatic weapons at airports and train stations - a scene which in the 90s and 2000s was the picture of „a problem from the West." Now that's the standard, and Germany - which avoided it the longest - is now discussing barriers, bollards, control points in purely pedestrian zones. Augustusplatz will get its bollards. The question isn't whether - but how many.