Why Car-Rammings Are on the Rise—and So Hard to Prevent

A The driver on Monday evening has plowed a mini-duties in a sea of ​​hundreds of thousands of football fans celebrating the victory of Liverpool 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 end of the season when a gray mini-dinner turned to the parade route around 6 p.m. The vehicle struck a man, throwing him into the air, then traveled a larger group of people before stopping, a video in social media shows. The crowd would have loaded the vehicle stopped and broke its windows, but the driver continued to cross the rest of the crowd. In total, 27 people were taken to the hospital, two of whom with serious injuries, and 20 others were treated on the scene for minor injuries, according to Dave Kitchin of the North West Ambulance Service.

Police arrested a 53 -year -old British white man from the Liverpool region. The police said they don’t believe that the incident is linked to terrorism, but asked that people do not speculate or share “online painful content” while the investigation takes place.

“Everyone, especially children, should be able to celebrate their heroes without this horror,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a Downing Street statement.

This is the last major incident for vehicles that occurs around the world. In April, a 30 -year -old man accelerated a SUV on a closed street in a host of people attending a Filité Filitage Festival in Vancouver, Canada, killing 11 years. In February, a 24 -year -old man killed a mother and daughter and injured 37 others when he struck his car in union aid in Munich, Germany. In January, a 42-year-old man led a van in a crowd to New Orleans, Louisiana, in the early hours of the New Year, killing at least 15 in what the police called an act of terrorism. In December, at least five people were killed and more than 200 injured when a 50 -year -old man struck a SUV in a Christmas market in Magdeburg in eastern Germany. And in November, a 62 -year -old man criticized a car in people exercising in a sports complex in Zhuhai, southern China, killing 35.

Here is what you need to know about vehicle fat, why they are so dangerous and what to do in the event of an attack.

Increased vehicle breeding attacks

Complete data is limited, but according to a 2019 study by researchers at the State University of San Jose, 70% of vehicle farming incidents until this point had occurred in the past five years. In 2016, vehicle depreciation attacks were the most deadly form of attack and represented more than half of all the deaths linked to terrorism that year. A series of high -level attacks in 2016 and 2017 killed more than 100 people, the deadliest of which occurred in Nice, in France, the Bastille Day, on July 14, 2016, when a man led a truck rented by a sea walk, killing 86.

In the past six months only, there have been 15 vehicle breeding attacks worldwide, not counting the last in Liverpool, killing 71 people, according to the National Transportation Security Center.

Why is it so difficult to prevent these attacks

Part of the reason for which vehicle priming has become a more frequent method of choice for the attacks by Casualty Masse is due to the relative ease of carrying out it. “This tactic requires little or no training, no specific skills and includes a relatively low risk of early detection,” said the Rand -Fucr -Fucrive Policy Policy.

“A car, a knife – these are daily objects, often it is not very clear that someone has bad intentions with them until it is too late,” Bart Schuurman, professor of terrorism and political violence at Le University of Leiden, Bartman in April. In the event of orchestrated terrorist attacks, the use of a vehicle allows people to bypass the efforts to combat terrorism that make access to firearms and explosives, added Schuurman.

But not all cases are orchestrated by terrorist groups. Certain incidents are linked to mental health, as in Zhuhai, China, or they are ideologically affiliated but committed by an individual. He became a method “quickly adopted” by right-wing extremists, for example, said Schuurman, as when a white supremacist killed one and wounded 35 people who protested against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2016 and when a 25-year-old is conceived “Incel”, led a rental van in a crowd of women in Toronto in 2018, 16.

The diversity of authors and their motivations poses an additional challenge to prevent attacks.

A 2018 study on the “imitative” quality of batteries on vehicles revealed that car writing incidents offer a model in terms of “the act itself, as something that is not only the expression of an individual or an ideology, but something that has a lure and a force that is its own.”

“It is unconsciously part of the repertoire of options so that people express their anger in one way or another and they are exposed there through the vectors of the media and social media,” the sociologist Vincent Miller told DW News, who co-written the study. “The aggressor’s profile is very difficult to define. The main thing they have in common is the act,” he added.

A 2021 Rand report examined how vehicle rental or sharing diets were used in certain attacks, such as this on New Year’s Day in New Orleans. He suggested that a limited collaboration between industry and the police due to data protection constraints, a lack of training at the industry level when it comes to identifying a potential attacker, and insufficient security procedures during online booking can make it more difficult to mitigate an attack.

Pauline Paille, a Rand Researcher Rand focused on international security, told DW News that certain obstacles to the rental of vehicles could be implemented to alleviate such attacks. These include checks of more solid backgrounds and financial deposits, as well as geofencing – which uses location data to create virtual limits for cars – to prevent smart cars from transformed into pedestrian areas.

Paille also said that urban areas could be redesigned to separate the roads from the trails. Vehicle barriers are already commonly used during large -scale outdoor pedestrian events such as festivals or parades as attenuation strategy.

What to do in the event of an attack

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Agency of the Ministry of Internal Security offers advice on how to prevent an attack or what to do if you occur.

Although the use of a car or another vehicle often means that there are fewer indicators of an attack land, the CISA suggests looking for the following and reporting to the authorities if they seem suspicious, in particular for vehicle rental business workers:

• Flight of large or heavy vehicles
• Difficulty explaining the expected use of a rented vehicle
• Nervousness or other suspicious behavior during a discussion on vehicle rental, for example the insistence to pay in cash
• Lack or refusal to produce documents required for a vehicle rental
• Difficulty in operating, or apparent lack of familiarity or experience with a rented vehicle
• Stroll, park or stand in the same area over several days without clear explanation
• Unexplained use of binoculars, cameras or registration devices in a certain area

In the event of vehicle breeding attack, pedestrians should:

• Flee the vehicle and to the nearest safe area
• If you fall, curl up in a protected position and try to get up as soon as possible to avoid being trampled
• Look for a blanket behind all the objects that eliminate the direct line of view of the vehicle
• Call 9-1-1 and follow the instructions of the police and the first stakeholders