Vehicle-ramming attack
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Vehicle ramming as a terrorism tactic is a form of suicide attack in which a terrorist deliberately rams a motor vehicle into a building or crowd of people.
Rise as a tactic
According to the American 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." Counterterrorism researcher Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for the 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." In 2010 Inspire, the online, English-language magazine produced by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula urged jihadis to choose "pedestrian only" locations and make sure to gain speed before ramming their vehicles into the crowd in order to "achieve maximum carnage".
Vehicle attacks can be carried out by Lone wolf terrorists who are inspired by an ideology, but who are not actually working within a specific political movement or group. Jamie Bartlett, who heads of "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. For authorities in Western countries, the difficulty is that even in a case line that of the perpetrator of the 2014 Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu ramming 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.” Experts see a saving grace in the ignorance and incompetence of most lone wolf terrorists, who often manage to murder very few people.
