Into the Crowd: The Evolution of Vehicular Attacks and Prevention Efforts

used in the attacks. Thirteen of the attacks (72%) were carried out by cars, three of the attacks (17%) were carried out by trucks and two (11%) by vans. It is notable that the two highest casualty attacks were carried out by trucks—the Nice attack (86 killed and 458 injured) and the Berlin attack (12 killed, 56 injured)—underlining that this form of vehicular attack poses the greatest threat. Nine of the attacks (50%) were carried out by vehicles owned by the perpetrators, seven of the attacks (39%) were carried out in rented vehicles, and two (11%) were carried out in stolen vehicles, in both cases trucks.

A total of 152 people died in the 18 attacks. Demonstrating that attacks are highly likely to produce casualties after being launched, 12 (67%) of the attacks produced fatalities and only one attack resulted in no injuries.

As can be seen Table 1, with the waning of the Islamic State international terror threat, terrorist use of vehicular attacks dropped in the West from 2018 onward, before ticking up in 2025 with the attacks in New Orleans and Munich. Both these attacks, especially the New Orleans attack, received significant media coverage or, in other words, created a new demonstration effect that could lead to a surge in copycat attacks in the months ahead.

The Evolution of Prevention Measures
Beginning in the 1990s, there have been efforts in the United States to harden buildings and other critical infrastructure from vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs).⁴⁰ In many cases, this had the added benefit of protecting pedestrians who use the sidewalks separating the street from commercial or government buildings. Security practitioners saw bollards as one means of hardening the landscape while not limiting the aesthetic value of the area. From the1990s, the use of bollards has been the preferred choice of protecting campuses and buildings in the United States. In the United States alone, 90,000 sites have added concrete bollards since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.⁴¹

Attempts to prevent any type of vehicular collision with pedestrians began as early as the 18th century with the use of wood and iron structures to direct pedestrians away from horse-drawn vehicles.⁴² Preventative measures continued to be adopted in the form of streets and highways being designed around neighborhoods well into the 20th century.⁴³ As Paul Hess and Sneda Mandhan point out, in New York, prior to the 2017 vehicle-ramming attacks in Nice and Berlin,