Key Points

• Attacks during the holiday season underscore the persistent threat of vehicle ramming assaults at public gatherings and truck and car bomb attacks on buildings.

• Vehicle ramming attacks have seen a significant increase in frequency since the COVID-19 pandemic and require security planning to separate vehicles from pedestrian areas and a sufficient number of security personnel to monitor and ensure the integrity of the established security perimeter.

• Effective security strategies to protect buildings from vehicle explosives and attacks include maximizing standoff distances, deterring potential attackers through visible security measures, and security procedures and inspections to dissuade potential attackers.

Vehicle Attacks Mar Holiday Season

The 2024 holiday season was marred by violent attacks on large gatherings, sparking renewed focus on cheap and easy vehicle attacks and the threat to public celebrations. In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, a truck plowed down New Orleans’ famous Bourbon Street killing 10 revelers and injuring dozens more, an assault that came just a few weeks after a car attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg that killed five holiday shoppers and critically injured more than 40.

The perpetrators in both attacks appeared to have acted alone, with the New Orleans attacker inspired by ISIS and anti-Islamic sentiment behind the attack in Germany. Although their motives appear to be diametrically opposed, they followed the same simple attack plan: drive a vehicle at high speed into a crowd of people. The attacks are reminiscent of the July 2016 attack in Nice, France, when a cargo truck drove into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day killing 86 people.

Elsewhere in the US on New Year’s Day, a man exploded a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Although the motive in that attack is thought to be suicide rather than terrorism, the explosion in the valet area adjacent to the hotel entrance provided another stark warning of the threat that vehicles can pose to people, property, and businesses.

Vehicle-Borne Threats and Security Countermeasures

Deliberate use of a vehicle as a weapon is by no means a new threat, but the recent attacks show that buildings and public gatherings are still vulnerable to them. That is worrying in light of the fact that vehicle attacks have become one of the deadliest forms of terror assaults worldwide. Experts note that thousands of people internationally have been victims of such attacks since the COVID-19 pandemic sparked an increase in outdoor events.

“Vehicle ramming attacks started to transition from a relatively rare method of attack to one of the most lethal forms of terrorism in Western countries just prior to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2,” according to analysis of global terrorism data published in a BMJ Group journal (“Democratization of terrorism: an analysis of vehicle-based terrorist events,” Trauma Surgery and Acute Care, Aug. 2022). “By 2016 vehicle attacks were the most lethal form of attack comprising just over half of all terrorism-related deaths in that year. Large gatherings such as festivals, sporting events, and now outdoor seating at restaurants, leave a number of people highly vulnerable to vehicle ramming attacks.”

The author notes that the increase in vehicle ramming attacks should raise concerns for counterterrorism officials, city planners, and event organizers around the world. “This unsophisticated and low-tech tactical approach to terrorism minimizes the potential for pre-attack detection by law enforcement.”

Vehicle ramming attacks have the ability to further democratize terrorism as a successful attack that merely requires a willingness to kill and can be completed by only one actor — 2022 Study of Vehicle-Based Terrorist Attacks

Studies indicate that the implementation of new vehicle controls—gates, altering traffic patterns, speed bumps, bollards—is the most common security response by companies to the threat of a vehicle attack. While such measures are more difficult to deploy for temporary events, such as street fairs or Christmas markets, plans to separate vehicles and pedestrians should be an early and primary security consideration in event planning.

So, too, is the need to deploy a sufficient number of security personnel (police and private security support) to maintain security perimeters and to ensure the integrity of physical barriers. In any event that attempts to establish a security perimeter, two fundamental aspects come into play: 'securing’ the restricted area and ‘monitoring’ the restricted area. Together, they are the foundation upon which internal layers of security sit.

Data from the Global Terrorism Database, created by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, indicates that vehicle attacks have been aimed at a wide array of targets, and—as government facilities enhance security—corporate sectors can become attractive “softer "targets. The security risk is most acute for buildings that would yield a high casualty count in a successful car or truck bomb attack or vehicle ramming incident. These include high-volume residences, recreational and shopping venues, large business buildings and complexes, and large hotels.

How should facilities and building operators view protection?

Despite the complicated physics of how a vehicle bomb can impact buildings, managing this type of security threat is remarkably straightforward: It’s all about distance.

In short, a blast’s shockwaves create pressure on a building which causes damage; and proximity effects this pressure dramatically. Although it depends somewhat on size, a car bomb at 25 ft. will put 40% less pressure on a building than a bomb just five feet closer. Every foot further away you can keep a vehicle, therefore, significantly limits the damage a car bomb will do to your facility.

Keeping an aggressor away from the building is the most effective strategy — Safety Engineer in a recent address to a global security conference

‍A realistic risk? Of course, whether or not any particular facility needs to worry about a potential terrorist attack depends on its risk profile, but if an attack is a concern, then car bombs need to be a focal point of a defensive posture. Bombings are terrorists’ favorite method of attack—accounting for more than 50% of all attacks worldwide over the last two decades. Car bombs, in particular, are simple to make and a favorite method of delivery. Compared to other terrorist events, vehicle bombs are high probability events.

What to do. Security options are often dictated by elements beyond a facility’s control (such as geography, traffic patterns, etc.), and, as always, a risk assessment should guide any entity’s response. Regarding the development of a defensive strategy, experts often suggest prioritizing 3 goals:

1. Maximize standoff. Standoff is a term to describe the limiting of vehicular access to a property and is the most full-proof prevention strategy. It can also be the most cost-effective—the greater the set-back of your building the less hardening your property needs. Also, measures that increase standoff between vehicles and buildings can provide value beyond limiting damage from a vehicle-borne explosive device, by minimizing pedestrian/vehicle collisions, parking violations, and even theft. Of course, effective standoff is easier to achieve if it’s a consideration before construction—rather than as a retrofit. As such, security experts need input into new projects, specifically by making sure that (a) building designers incorporate security into their design; and (b) the security design they propose is in line with the defense your company needs. Security design can aid standoff by: increasing the set-back of the building from the street; increasing the distance of adjacent parking areas; placing entrances out of alignment with the adjacent street; using strategically positioned barriers, such as courtyards, plazas, landscaping, perimeter bollards or planters, fountains, reflecting ponds, and other features to insure that a vehicle armed with a bomb will not be able to drive up next to the building and park; using stairs to slow down a vehicle attempting a high-speed approach.

2. Deter potential attackers. Attackers assess potential targets for whether security measures will prevent them a successful vehicle attack. Security measures that can help deter them include: controlling and screening all delivery service; providing uniform level of lighting around the property; using video surveillance to monitor and record vehicle activity; locating shipping and receiving areas in a remote area of the facility; and frequently patrolling parking areas.

3. Minimize potential impact. A business might choose to protect building occupants against broken glass by using window film, blast curtains, or blast resistant glazing materials; locate critical functions and life-safety systems toward the inside of the building, away from the exterior where they are more vulnerable to explosions; locate building occupants away from portions of the building directly with street frontage; create safe interior areas for valuable assets; separate critical utilities away from one another.

Surveillance to Ward-Off Vehicle Attacks

Regardless of the source of an attack—be it a terrorist group or an individual(s) with a vendetta—some sort of surveillance will likely precede it. Below are security strategies that a potential attacker doesn’t want to see, and the more measures in place, the less likely a perpetrator is to believe that an attack will have the desired maximum impact. (A facility should base its choice of security measures on an internal risk assessment.)

• Check multiple forms of valid identification for each vehicle occupant.

• Verify the legitimate business needs of all approaching vehicles.

• Occasionally implement random security officer shift changes.

• Increase the number of visible security personnel wherever possible.

• Institute a robust vehicle inspection program to include checking under the undercarriage of vehicles, under the hood, and in the trunk.

• Utilize security personnel sufficiently trained in vehicle inspection.

• Where practical, prevent vehicular traffic from having a straight approach to the security checkpoint. This measure will prevent vehicles from reaching high rates of speed and crashing through the checkpoint.

• Install Jersey barriers, bollards, or concrete planters, deploy manned checkpoints, and use ditching and berms to prevent vehicles from driving through perimeter fencing.

• Rearrange exterior vehicle barriers, traffic cones, and roadblocks to alter traffic patterns near facilities.

• Improve perimeter security lighting.

• Employ sensor systems that immediately drop vehicle gates after a single vehicle passes to prevent vehicle tailgating (a sliding gate vehicle barrier that permits a motivated individual to follow the car in front of them offers no terrorism protection at all).

• Facilities deemed to be high risk should consider using off-site delivery facilities where vehicles bring outside cargo for screening.

• Establish multiple, layered entry points at high-risk facilities.

• Post signs stating that vehicles parked in unauthorized areas will be towed immediately.

• Utilize security officers to approach all illegally parked vehicles in and around facilities, question drivers, and direct them to move immediately; if the owner cannot be identified, have the vehicle towed.

• Identify key areas in and/or adjacent to a facility where an attacker could park a vehicle and be in close proximity to large numbers of personnel. Exclude vehicular parking in these areas or conduct a thorough search and monitor such areas with security cameras.

• Encourage staff to look for and report suspicious vehicles.

• Sensitize staff to the possibility of terrorists using official vehicles (and uniforms), as a means to gain access.

• Validate vendor lists of all routine emergency deliveries and repair services.