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

physical security of public spaces was focused on VBIEDs.⁴⁴ The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency did not provide any guidance on how to protect against vehicle ramming that was not delivered via VBIED.⁴⁵ Protection rested on diversion of vehicles from high pedestrian zones with the use of bollards and other physical barriers, or limiting access of vehicles and pedestrians to areas deemed critical.⁴⁶ According to the Mineta Transportation Institute, since 2012, preventative measures have evolved to include more technology, such as cameras, fencing, and effective intelligence gathering, to disrupt potential attacks.⁴⁷

It was after the Nice and Berlin attacks of 2016 that governments and security practitioners in the West focused significant attention on protecting against the vehicle-ramming threat to pedestrianized areas. Governments and security practitioners began working on new prevention techniques. Traditional retractable traffic bollards were deemed no longer sufficient because they cannot withstand the impact of large trucks. Stronger protective measures were put in place, with, for example, the French company La Barrière Automatique (LBA) developing a retractable bollard capable of withstanding the impact of a 7.5-ton truck going 80 kilometers per hour (approximately 50 miles per hour).⁴⁸ The LBA model is deployed one meter above ground and another 1.70 meters below, providing an ‘iceberg’ protection effect. While traditionally delivering products for the French Vigipirate national security plan, LBA is seeing its customer base expand from embassies, industrial sites, and stadiums to communities and businesses such as shopping centers and supermarkets. Much like the LBA model, Intertex Barriers of Valencia, California, has developed a retractable barrier that can be manually operated or function autonomously.⁴⁹

In recent years, the use of active, passive, deployable, or improvised vehicle-ramming mitigation tools became common practice.⁵⁰ Vehicle inspections and security checks at entry points, remote parking, and shuttle services have also helped in mitigating the risk as once an attack is underway, it is extremely difficult to stop because of the speed of the attack and the difficulty in bringing a moving vehicle to a stop. During the Nice attack, for example, the killing was only stopped by the action of a civilian was able to throw his scooter in front of the 19-ton truck, slowing it down so that law enforcement officers were able to shoot and neutralize the terrorist.⁵¹ The use of hollow point bullets by a majority of law enforcement agencies⁵² is another impediment to stopping attacks in their tracks due