At least 10 people were killed and 30 injured in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day, when a man deliberately plowed a pickup truck into crowds on Bourbon Street, local officials said. The authorities are investigating the attack as an act of terrorism.
The incident was the latest in a long string of vehicle-based attacks against crowds, dating back decades. Vehicle ramming did not start as a terrorist tactic, but it has frequently been used by extremist organizations and radicalized individuals to kill, injure and instill fear, using some of the most commonplace objects in modern life.
Here’s what you need to know:
Why are vehicles used as weapons?
Cars and trucks are ubiquitous, especially in the developed world, and can easily be repurposed into deadly weapons.
Assailants with “limited access to explosives or weapons” can use vehicles to cause great harm “with minimal prior training or experience,” according to an F.B.I. handout on “Terrorist Use of Vehicle Ramming Tactics.”
Vehicle ramming attacks transform “a bland, everyday object into a lethal, semi-strategic weapon,” the researchers Vincent Miller and Keith Hayward wrote in a 2019 study published in The British Journal of Criminology. The tactic gives “marginal actors” the ability to “strike at the heart of urban centers and sow fear in the wider society,” they added.