Why Car-Rammings Are on the Rise—and So Hard to Prevent
More than 45 people were injured in Liverpool in the latest major vehicular attack across the globe.
time.com
A driver on Monday evening plowed a minivan into a sea of hundreds of thousands of soccer fans celebrating Liverpool’s victory in the Premier League, injuring more than 45 people, including at least four children.
Fans wrapped in red scarves and dressed in the English team’s jerseys were at a victory parade the day after the season’s end when a grey minivan turned onto the parade route around 6 p.m. local time. The vehicle struck a man, throwing him into the air, then plowed through a larger group of people before coming to a stop, video on social media shows. The crowd reportedly charged the stopped vehicle and smashed its windows, but the driver continued driving through the rest of the crowd. In total, 27 people were taken to the hospital, including two with serious injuries, and 20 others were treated at the scene for minor injuries, according to Dave Kitchin of North West Ambulance Service.
Police arrested a 53-year old white British man from the Liverpool area. Police say they do not believe the incident is terrorism-related but asked that people not speculate or share “distressing content online” while the investigation proceeds.
“Everyone, especially children, should be able to celebrate their heroes without this horror,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement from Downing Street.
It’s the latest major vehicle-ramming incident to happen across the globe. In April, a 30-year-old man sped an SUV down a closed street into a crowd of people attending a Filipino heritage festival in Vancouver, Canada, killing 11. In February, a 24-year-old man killed a mother and her daughter and injured 37 others when he rammed his car into a union rallydemonstration in Munich, Germany. In January, a 42-year-old man drove a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans, La., in the early hours of New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 in what police called an act of terrorism. In December, at least five people were killed and over 200 injured when a 50-year-old man rammed an SUV into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, eastern Germany. And in November, a 62-year-old man slammed a car into people exercising at a sports complex in Zhuhai, southern China, killing 35.
Here’s what to know about vehicle-rammings, why they’re so dangerous, and what to do in case of an attack.
Vehicle-ramming attacks on the rise
Comprehensive data is limited, but according to a 2019 study from San Jose State University researchers, 70% of vehicle-ramming incidents up to that point had happened in the last five years. In 2016, vehicle-ramming attacks were the most lethal form of attack and accounted for more than half of all terrorism-related deaths that year. A string of high-profile attacks in 2016 and 2017 killed more than 100 people, the deadliest of which happened in Nice, France, on Bastille Day, July 14, 2016, when a man drove a rented truck through a seaside promenade, killing 86.In the past six months alone, there have been 15 vehicle-ramming attacks worldwide, not counting the latest in Liverpool, killing 71 people, according to the National Transportation Security Center.
Why it’s so hard to prevent these attacks
Part of why vehicle-ramming has become a more frequent method of choice for mass-casualty attacks is due to the relative ease in carrying it out. “This tactic requires little or no training, no specific skillset, and carries a relatively low risk of early detection,” nonprofit global policy think tank Rand said.“A car, a knife—these are everyday items, often it’s very unclear that someone has bad intentions with them until it’s too late,” Bart Schuurman, professor of terrorism and political violence at Leiden University, told Euronews in April. In cases of orchestrated terror attacks, using a vehicle lets people get around counter-terrorism efforts that make access to firearms and explosives difficult, Schuurman added.
But not all cases are orchestrated by terrorist groups. Some incidents are mental health-related, like in Zhuhai, China, or they are ideologically-affiliated but committed by an individual. It’s become a “quickly adopted” method by right-wing extremists, for example, Schuurman said, such as when a white supremacist killed one and injured 35 people who were protesting against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2016 and when a 25-year old self-described “incel,” drove a rental van into a crowd of mainly women in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people and injuring 16.
The diversity in perpetrators and their motivations poses an additional challenge to preventing attacks.
A 2018 study on the “imitative” quality of vehicle rammings found that car-ramming incidents offer a model in terms of “the act itself, as something that is not merely an expression of an individual or an ideology, but something that has a lure and force all of its own.”
“It subconsciously becomes part of the repertoire of options for people to express their anger in some way and they get exposed to it through the vectors of the media and social media,” sociologist Vincent Miller, who co-authored the study, told DW News. “The profile of the perpetrator is very hard to define. The main thing they have in common is the act,” he added.
A 2021 report by Rand looked into how rental or vehicle-sharing schemes have been used in some attacks, such as was the case in the New Year’s Day ramming in New Orleans. It suggested that limited collaboration between industry and law enforcement due to data protection constraints, a lack of industry-wide training when it comes to identifying a potential attacker, and insufficient security procedures during online booking can all make it harder to mitigate an attack.
Pauline Paille, a Rand researcher focused on international security, told DW News that certain barriers to vehicle rentals could be implemented to mitigate against such attacks. These include stronger background checks and financial deposits, as well as geofencing—which uses location data to create virtual boundaries for cars—to block smart cars from turning into pedestrianized areas.
Paille also said that urban areas could be redesigned to separate roads from footpaths. Vehicle barriers are already commonly used during large-scale outdoor pedestrian events such as festivals or parades as a mitigation strategy.
What to do in case of an attack
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency offers some guidance on how to prevent an attack or what to do if one happens.While the use of a car or other vehicle often means there are fewer indicators of an attack plot, CISA suggests looking out for the following and reporting them to authorities if they seem suspicious, particularly for vehicle rental business workers:
- Reported theft of large or heavy-duty vehicles
- Difficulty explaining the planned use of a rented vehicle
- Nervousness or other suspicious behaviour during a vehicle rental discussion, for example insistence on paying in cash
- Lack of or refusal to produce required documentation for a vehicle rental
- Difficulty operating, or apparent lack of familiarity or experience with, a rented vehicle
- Loitering, parking, or standing in the same area over multiple days with no clear explanation
- Unexplained use of binoculars, cameras, or recording devices around a certain area
- Run away from the vehicle and towards the nearest safe area
- If you fall, curl into a protected position and try to get up as soon as possible to avoid being trampled
- Seek cover behind any objects that eliminate the direct line of sight from the vehicle
- Call 9-1-1 and follow instructions from law enforcement and first responders
Organizers of events should:
- Include clear signage for emergency entry and exit points, first-aid stations, and shelter locations
- Define the perimeter that requires access control for pedestrians and vehicles
- Restrict vehicular traffic through pedestrianized areas
- Use remote parking and shuttle services
- Use physical barriers like bollards, heavy planters, and barricades, to create standoff distances between large crowds and vehicles
- Consider positioning heavy vehicles around the perimeter of crowded areas to serve as an additional physical barrier
