Form of attack in which a perpetrator rams vehicle into people or structures
For vehicle ramming for the purpose of burglary, see Ram-raiding.
"Car attack" redirects here. For the event of a car being used for a shooting, see Drive-by shooting. For the event of a car being bombed, see Car bomb.
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]
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]
^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)."
^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."
^ abAlan 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."
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