In light of back-to-back casualty incidents involving trucks, terrorism experts are warning of an increase in vehicle related attacks due to their low cost and high body count, USA Today reported on Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, rammed a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens of others before being shot to death by police, according to authorities. Later in the day, a Tesla-made Cybertruck exploded outside the entrance the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, killing the driver and injuring several others. In December, a Saudi psychiatrist deliberately drove a rented BMW SUV through a German Christmas market, killing five and injuring more than 200.
"The accessibility of vehicles makes this a widespread threat (for) any gathering of people, whether for a New Year's celebration or just a normal weekend on Bourbon Street," said Ryan Houser, a terrorism and mass-casualty-attack researcher and consultant who wrote a 2022 study on such attacks.
Houser said vehicles are appealing simply because they're effective. They can kill a large number of people quickly making it hard for police to respond. ISIS has openly called for the use of vehicles to attack "the disbelieving American," citing their low cost and availability. In 2016, in the online ISIS magazine Rumiyah, the terror group specified the ideal make, weight and speed a car would need to inflict mass casualties and encouraged attacks at "large outdoor conventions and celebrations, pedestrian-congested streets, outdoor markets, festivals, festivals, parades[, and] political rallies."
"Vehicle ramming attacks have the ability to further democratize terrorism as a successful attack that merely requires a willingness to kill and can be completed by only one actor," he concluded in his study. "The increased prevalence of outdoor activities and gatherings in a post-COVID-19 world will further expose large numbers of people to potential vulnerabilities within security that place them at risk of being the victim of vehicle-based terrorism."
In 2016, vehicle attacks internationally represented half of all terrorism related deaths that year, according to one researcher's analysis of the open-source Global Terrorism Database. That was the same year as the deadliest vehicle attack to date when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel killed 86 and injured 434 in Nice, France.
Houser added that appeal of using automobiles extends beyond the physical trauma into the psychological. "A single vehicle has the potential to cause a large mass casualty incident that overwhelms local and mutual aid resources," he wrote in his analysis. "Additionally, the traumatic injuries that result from a vehicle ramming incident have the potential to overwhelm the medical capabilities of emergency and operating rooms."
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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