Vehicle-ramming attack

For vehicle ramming for the purposes of burglary, see ram-raiding.

"Car attack" redirects here. For the event of a car being used for a shooting, see Drive-by. For the event of a car being bombed, see Car bomb.

Main article: Vehicular homicide

A vehicle-ramming attack, also known as a vehicle as a weapon or VAW attack,^[1] is an assault in which a perpetrator deliberately rams a vehicle into a building, people,^[2][3] or another vehicle. According to Stratfor Global Intelligence analysts, this attack represents a relatively new militant tactic that could prove more difficult to prevent than suicide bombings.^[4]

The 2017 Stockholm truck attack killed five.

The 2008 Jerusalem bulldozer attack killed three.

Deliberate vehicle-ramming into a crowd of people is a tactic used by terrorists,^[5] becoming a major terrorist tactic in the 2010s because it requires little skill to perpetrate, cars and trucks are widely available, and it has the potential to cause significant casualties.^[6][7][8] Deliberate vehicle-ramming has also been carried out in the course of other types of crimes,^[9] including road rage incidents.^[10][11] Deliberate vehicle-ramming incidents have also sometimes been ascribed to the driver's psychiatric disorder.^[12][a]

Vehicles have also been used by attackers to breach buildings with locked gates, before detonating explosives, as in the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier attack.^[13]

Causes and motives

Ease

According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the tactic has gained popularity because "Vehicle ramming offers terrorists with limited access to explosives or weapons an opportunity to conduct a homeland attack with minimal prior training or experience."^[2] Vehicles are as easy to acquire as knives, but unlike knives, which may arouse suspicion if found in one's possession, vehicles are essential for daily life, and the capability of vehicles to cause casualties if used aggressively is underestimated.^[14]

Islamic terrorism

Counterterrorism researcher Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Slate that the tactic has been on the rise in Israel because, "the security barrier is fairly effective, which makes it hard to get bombs into the country."^[15] In 2010, Inspire, the online, English-language magazine produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula urged mujahideen to choose "pedestrian only" locations and make sure to gain speed before ramming their vehicles into the crowd in order to "achieve maximum carnage".^[15]

Vehicle attacks can be carried out by lone-wolf terrorists who are inspired by an ideology but who are not working within a specific political movement or group.^[16] Writing for The Daily Beast, Jacob Siegel suggests that the perpetrator of the 2014 Couture-Rouleau attack may be "the kind of terrorist the West could be seeing a lot more of in the future", a kind that he describes, following Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation, as "stray dogs", rather than lone wolves, characterizing them as "misfits" who are "moved from seething anger to spontaneous deadly action" by exposure to Islamist propaganda.^[17] A 2014 propaganda video by ISIL encouraged French sympathizers to use cars to run down civilians.^[18]

According to Clint Watts, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, where he is a senior fellow and expert on terrorism, the older model where members of groups like al-Qaeda would "plan and train together before going to carry out an attack, became defunct around 2005", due to increased surveillance by Western security agencies.^[17] Watts says that Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaeda imam, as a key figure in this shift, addressing English-speakers in their language and urging them to "Do your own terrorism and stay in place."^[17]

Jamie Bartlett, who heads the Violence and Extremism Program at Demos, a British think tank, explains that "the internet in the last few years has both increased the possibilities and the likelihood of lone-wolf terrorism", supplying isolated individuals with ideological motivation and technique.^[19] For authorities in Western countries, the difficulty is that even in a case like that of the perpetrator of the 2014 Couture-Rouleau attack, where Canadian police had identified the attacker, taken away his passport, and were working with his family and community to steer him away from jihad, vehicle attacks can be hard to prevent because, "it's very difficult to know exactly what an individual is planning to do before a crime is committed. We cannot arrest someone for thinking radical thoughts; it's not a crime in Canada."^[19][20]

According to Stratfor, the American global intelligence firm, "while not thus far as deadly as suicide bombing", this tactic could prove more difficult to prevent. No single group has claimed responsibility for the incidents.^{[4][clarification needed]} Experts see a saving grace in the ignorance and incompetence of most lone-wolf terrorists, who often manage to murder very few people.^[19]

Protest encounters

Vehicular ramming has sometimes been advocated to attack protesters who block public roadways in the United States. Two police officers were suspended and fired in January and June 2016, respectively, for tweeting such advice about Black Lives Matter rallies, which have sometimes been broken up by cars. North Dakota state legislator Keith Kempenich tried and failed to pass a law granting civil immunity to drivers who accidentally hit activists after his mother-in-law was stopped by Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, and Tennessee Senator Bill Ketron did likewise after a man hit an anti-Trump group. Similar legislation has been introduced in Florida and Texas.^[21]

Protective measures

 

Security measures taken to protect the Houses of Parliament in London, UK. These heavy blocks of concrete are designed to prevent a car bomb or other device being rammed into the building.

 

Concrete blocks in the city centre of Dresden during the 2016 German Unity Day Celebrations

 

Bollards installed on London Bridge to prevent attacks

Main article: Hostile vehicle mitigation

Protective measures against vehicle attacks are known as hostile vehicle mitigation. This involves reducing the risk posed by vehicle as a weapon attacks through a mixture of measures. Visibly this often includes physical barriers, but also includes other measures such as deterrence, staff training, traffic management, and incident response planning.^[22]

Security bollards are credited with minimizing damage and casualties in the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack,^[23][24] and with preventing ramming in the 2014 Alon Shvut stabbing attack, leading the assailant to abandon his car and attack pedestrians waiting at a bus stop with a knife, after his effort to run them over was thwarted.^[25] However, Berlin's police chief, Klaus Kandt, argued that bollards would not have prevented the 2016 Berlin truck attack, and that the required security measures would be "varied, complex, and far from a panacea".^[26]

On 23 October 2014, the US National Institute of Building Sciences updated its Building Design Guideline on Crash- and Attack-Resistant Models of bollards, a guideline written to help professionals design bollards to protect facilities from vehicle operators, "who plan or carry out acts of property destruction, incite terrorism, or cause the deaths of civilian, industrial or military populations".^[27] The American Bar Association recommends bollards as effective protection against car-ramming attacks.^[28]

In January 2018, it was announced by the then mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, that the city planned to install 1,500 steel street barriers to prevent vehicle attacks. This came after the city's two vehicle-ramming attacks in 2017 killed nine people.^[29]

Münster has been planning to install security bollards in public areas in response to vehicle-ramming attacks in European cities, including the Berlin attack.^[30] While only selected locations can be protected this way, tight bends and restricted-width streets may also prevent a large vehicle getting speed before reaching a barrier.^[31]

Modern Internet-connected drive-by-wire cars can potentially be hacked remotely and used for such attacks. To demonstrate the severity of this type of attack, 2015 hackers remotely carjacked a Jeep from 10 miles away and drove it into a ditch.^[32][33] Measures for cybersecurity of automobiles to prevent such attacks are often criticized as being insufficient.^{[citation needed]}

In Toronto, older transit buses and sanitation vehicles are used as anti-ramming barricades, providing a more benign public experience.^[34]

List of attacks

Main article: List of vehicle-ramming attacks

Video of the vehicular ramming of the Unite the Right Rally counter-protesters that killed one person and injured 35 others ^[35]

In chronological order:

• 1973 Olga Hepnarová case, Czechoslovakian woman using a truck to go on a rampage; 8 dead, 12 injured.^[36]
• 1983 Douglas Crabbe drove a 25-tonne Mack truck into the crowded bar of a motel at the base of Uluru on 18 August 1983. Five people were killed, and sixteen were seriously injured.
• 1999 Shimonoseki Station massacre (ramming and stabbing)
• 2009 attack on the Dutch royal family (ramming people, attempt to attack the Dutch royals including the reigning monarch; 8 killed)
• 2016 Nice truck attack, France (86 killed, ramming people and gunfire)
• 2017 Charlottesville attack, during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States (ramming people; 1 killed
• 2018 Toronto van attack (ramming people; 11 killed and 15 injured)^[37][38]

Notes

1. Accidental vehicle ramming causing multiple deaths or injuries to pedestrians or others also occurs, although rarely.^[5] Some causes of such accidental mass-casualty vehicular ramming include drunk and drug–impaired driving, or underlying conditions such as dementia, narcolepsy, or epilepsy.^[12] See also sudden unintended acceleration.^[5]

See also

• Ram-raiding
• Vehicular homicide
• Vehicular suicide
• Mass murder
• Stabbing as a terrorist tactic
• Improvised weapons

References

1. "The National Vehicle Threat Mitigation Unit". Protect UK. 19 August 2021.
2. Issued 13 December 2012 (14 February 2012). "Department of Homeland Security-FBI Warning: Terrorist Use of Vehicle Ramming Tactics". FBI and Department of Homeland Security. from the original on 28 October 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
3. Rapoport, David C. (2006). Terrorism: The fourth or religious wave. Taylor & Francis. pp. 150–. ISBN 978-0-415-31654-5. from the original on 10 December 2014.
4. "Israel: Vehicle Attacks – A New Militant Tactic?". Stratfor Global Intelligence.
5. "Mass casualty traffic incidents like Endymion's are rare, but do happen". New Orleans Times-Picayune. 27 February 2017. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
6. Amanda Erickson & Isaac Stanley-Becker, How ramming cars into crowds became a major terror tactic, Washington Post (22 March 2017).
7. Keating, Joshua (5 November 2014). "Why Terrorists Use Vehicles as Weapons". Slate. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
8. Jamison, Alastair (20 December 2016). "Truck Attacks: Low-Tech, Soft Target Terrorism Is Growing Threat". NBC News. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
9. David Ormerod, John Cyril Smith & Brian Hogan, Smith and Hogan's Criminal Law (13th ed. 2011: Oxford University Press), p. 1138: "There are at least six ways that a person might be held liable for causing a death by driving. At the most extreme it is possible for D[efendant] to be liable for murder, as when he drivers at V[ictim] with intent to kill or do gbh (great bodily harm)."
10. R.G. Smart, "Transport Related Stress" in Stress Consequences: Mental, Neuropsychological and Socioeconomic (ed. George Fink: Academic Press, 2009), p. 708: "A national study in the United States found that ... of respondents ... 1-2% had gotten out of their cars to hurt other drivers, deliberately hit other drivers, or had carried a weapon."
11. Audi driver pleads guilty after video shows him mowing down man in road-rage incident in New Brunswick, Canadian Press (28 February 2017).
12. Alan R. Felthouse, "Personal Violence" in The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Forensic Psychiatry (2d ed.: eds. Robert I. Simon & Liza H. Gold), pp. 551-52: "An automobile is a potentially lethal machine. Litigation involving psychiatrists has resulted when a hospitalized patient, after discharges, caused a two-person vehicle accident with death or injuries to one or more victims ... Such cases involve three different types of scenarios. One is the vehicular crash that results from the patient's medication-induced drowsiness at the wheel ... The second scenario is a true accident but is unrelated to any prescribed medication. Rather, the patient's driving is impaired by the disabling effects of mental illness [or] recent consumption of nonprescribed drugs or alcohol. The third situation is when the patient deliberately crashes into another vehicle. Neuropsychiatric conditions that can be associated with an increased risk of vehicular crash include psychotic exacerbation of schizophrenia, profound or suicidal depression, dementia, and disturbances in consciousness, such as epilepsy and narcolepsy."
13. Weinberg, Stevie. "The June 26 Saint-Quentin-Fallavier (France) Attack". IDC Herzliya. Retrieved 24 September 2021.
14. Blake, Paul; Kreider, Randy. "The New Tools of Terror: Vehicular Violence at Center of Recent Attacks". ABC News. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
15. Keating, Joshua (5 November 2014). "Why Terrorists Use Vehicles as Weapons". Slate. from the original on 6 November 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
16. Daly, Brian (21 October 2014). "Lone wolf terrorists hard to stop". Edmonton Sun. QMI. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
17. Siegel, Jacob (24 October 2014). "Lone Wolves, Terrorist Runts, and the Stray Dogs of ISIS Why ISIS and al Qaeda rely on loners and losers to carry out their terrorist agenda in the West". Daily Beast. from the original on 7 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
18. "ISIS and Al Qaeda have specifically called for the type of attack that just happened in France". Business Insider.
19. Bajekal, Naina (23 October 2014). "The Rise of the Lone Wolf Terrorist". Time Magazine. from the original on 14 November 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
20. Mataconis, Doug (23 October 2014). "The attack on Canada's Parliament and the 'lone wolf' terrorist". Christian Science Monitor. from the original on 6 November 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
21. Grabar, Henry (14 August 2017). ""Run Them Down"". Slate.com.
22. "Hostile vehicle mitigation". National Protective Security Authority.
23. Garfield, Simon (7 December 2007). "Terrorists are foiled at Glasgow airport". The Guardian. from the original on 7 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
24. "Glasgow airport ramps up use of bollards". Glasgow Evening Times. 22 December 2008. from the original on 7 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
25. Tait, Robert (10 November 2014). "Israeli woman, 25, and soldier killed in twin stabbing attacks – Incidents happen hours apart, suggesting an escalation of recent violence". The Daily Telegraph. from the original on 11 November 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
26. Halliday, Josh; Perraudin, Frances (20 December 2016). "What can be done to prevent Berlin-style attacks in modern cities?". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
27. Oakes, Charles (23 October 2014). "The Bollard: Crash- and Attack-Resistant Models". Whole Building Design Guide, National Institute of Building Sciences. from the original on 7 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
28. Ernest B. Abbott and Otto J. Hetzel, "Homeland Security Begins at Home: Local Planning and Regulatory Review to Improve Security", in Rufus Calhoun Young, Jr. and Dwight H. Merriam, A Legal Guide to Homeland Security and Emergency Management for State and Local Governments, American Bar Association, 2006
29. "New York to install 1,500 security barriers after vehicle attacks". BBC News. 3 January 2018. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
30. "Do bollards offer protection against vehicle attacks?". DW. 8 March 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
31. Desk, iHLS News (9 January 2017). "Vehicle Ramming Attacks - Are There Any Security Measures? - iHLS".
32. Greenberg, Andy. "Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It". WIRED. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
33. "Hackers take control of car, drive it into a ditch". The Independent. 22 July 2015. Archived from the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
34. "New TTC security buses used as barricades at Remembrance Day services". CIty News Everywhere. 11 November 2018. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
35. Duggan, Paul (14 December 2017). "Charge upgraded to first-degree murder for driver accused of ramming Charlottesville crowd". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
36. "Olga Hepnarová: The Truck-Driving Mass Murderess Of Czechoslovakia". 12 May 2016.
37. "640 Toronto on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
38. "'A huge loss': Yonge Street van attack victim Amaresh Tesfamariam missed 'every day'". 12 November 2021.

External links

•   Media related to Vehicle-ramming attacks at Wikimedia Commons
• In Harm's Way: Vehicle rammings against protesters are on the rise, but the justice system often sides with drivers - Boston Globe investigation