A driver steered a rented pickup truck around a police barricade. He drove into the New Year’s crowds on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. The attack came at about 3:15 a.m. on Wednesday. It killed 14 people and injured dozens more. It was the latest of the vehicle attacks on crowded streets. Police then shot the driver dead. Investigators identified the attacker as a 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Texas. He had posted videos declaring allegiance to the Islamic State group. They found an Islamic State flag in the truck.
FBI agents are investigating the attack as an act of terrorism. It was the deadliest vehicle-ramming in American history. For counterterrorism officials, it was also grimly familiar. Over the past decade, vehicle attacks have become a favorite weapon against crowds in Western cities. They require no training, no network and almost no preparation. That is precisely why attackers choose them.
KEY POINTS
- The attack killed 14 people in New Orleans. That surpassed the 2017 New York bike-path attack as the deadliest vehicle rampage in the United States.
- Vehicle attacks have struck Nice, Berlin, London, Toronto and other cities since 2016, killing more than 140 people outside war zones.
- Security experts say barriers and street design save lives, but no city can seal every crowded sidewalk.
Vehicle attacks: a weapon anyone can rent
The modern wave of crowd attacks began on July 14, 2016. A Tunisian man drove a cargo truck through Bastille Day revellers on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France. He killed 86 people. Five months later, an attacker drove a hijacked truck into a Christmas market at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz. That attack killed 12 people. In June 2017, attackers in London drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge. They then stabbed bystanders, killing eight. That October, an Uzbek immigrant rented a pickup in New York. He drove it down a Hudson River bike path and killed eight people, most of them tourists.
Canada has its own place in that history. In April 2018, a man drove a rental van down a Toronto sidewalk. He killed 10 people and injured 16. The attack was linked to misogynist online subcultures rather than jihadist ideology. It showed that the tactic has spread across belief systems. A driver also used a car to kill a woman during the 2017 rally violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. And in 2021, a driver steered an SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. It killed six people in an attack prosecutors did not tie to terrorism at all.
Just weeks before New Orleans, another attack struck on Dec. 20. A car sped into a Christmas market crowd in Magdeburg, Germany. It killed five people and injured more than 200. That attack had already pushed vehicle security back onto the agenda. Every city planning holiday events was reviewing its plans.
Why the tactic keeps spreading
Islamic State propagandists have explicitly promoted vehicle attacks since 2014. That year, a spokesman for the group urged followers to run over civilians. Its later online magazines published detailed tactical guidance. Security analysts say the appeal is obvious. Anyone can rent a truck with a licence and a credit card. The “training” is ordinary driving. And the target set is effectively unlimited — any festival, parade, market or nightlife street.
That does not make such attacks unstoppable, analysts add. But it changes what prevention looks like. The most effective measures have been physical. Cities use steel bollards, planters, barriers and street layouts. These keep vehicles and pedestrians apart at predictable gathering points. New Orleans had installed bollards on Bourbon Street in 2017. But officials confirmed on Wednesday that workers were replacing the system ahead of next month’s Super Bowl. The attacker reached the crowd by driving onto the sidewalk around a parked police car.
What happens next
Investigators in New Orleans are still working through the attacker’s movements and his online activity. They also found two improvised explosive devices in coolers nearby. Those devices did not detonate. For other cities, the immediate consequence is a fresh audit of event security. New Orleans itself faces the Super Bowl on Feb. 9 and Mardi Gras soon after. Officials across the United States and Europe said Wednesday they were reviewing barrier plans for upcoming events.
The harder question has followed every attack since Nice. How much of public life can cities fence off? The record of the last decade points to one answer. Cities keep choosing targeted hardening. They protect the biggest, most predictable crowds. And they accept that the risk elsewhere can shrink but never disappear.
Sources: FBI statements; New Orleans Police Department briefings; court and official records of the attacks.
