Liverpool parade crash: Why Europe is witnessing a rise in car-ramming attacks

First Post

27-05-2025

Dozens of people in Liverpool were injured, including four children, after a minivan rammed into a crowd during a Premier League victory parade for Liverpool Football Club. There have been several such attacks in Europe since 2009. But why is this happening? What do experts say? read more
Forensic officers prepare equipment near the site where a 53-year-old British man plowed a minivan into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans who were celebrating the city's Premier League championship Monday. There have been at least nine such major incidents in Europe since 2009. AP
Triumph turned into tragedy in Liverpool on Monday.
Dozens of people were injured including four children after a minivan rammed into a crowd.
The incident occurred during a Premier League victory parade for Liverpool Football Club.
Authorities said a 53-year-old white, British man from Liverpool has been arrested.
Authorities say there is no terrorism angle to the incident.
But what do we know about the incidents? Why is there a rise in car rammings across Europe?
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Let's take a closer look
What do we know?
First, let's take a brief look at the use of cars as weapons.
There have been at least nine such major incidents in Europe since 2009.
This includes attacks in the UK, Germany, France and Netherlands.
Time Magazine quoted a 2019 study from San Jose State University researchers as saying that 70 per cent of such Incidents had occurred in the past five years.
In 2016, vehicle-ramming attacks were the most deadly form of attack.
They comprised over half of all terrorism-related deaths that year.
As per the National Transportation Security Center, there have been at least 15 vehicle-ramming attacks worldwide in which 71 were left dead.
Why are cars used?
As per DW, cars have become a weapon of choice for assailants due to their size, speed and maneuverability.
They first became a popular weapon for terrorists to use in the mid-2010s in Israel.
The Islamic State during that period also called for cars to be used as weapons in attacks.
While most of these attacks had some link to religion and politics, this is not always the case.
The outlet quoted sociologist Vincent Miller of Kent University in the UK and Keith Hayward, a professor of criminology at Copenhagen University, as arguing in a 2018 paper that car rammings were 'imitative' events.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
They claimed others were simply imitating incidents they had seen or read about rather than being motivated by a particular ideology.
Miller pointed at such attacks in China – which have been called 'revenge on society' incidents.
'The people that are doing this are often quite aggrieved, there's a sense of injustice there, a sense of anger," Miller told DW.
The argument that there are political or religious motivations don't seem to hold up, according to Miller and Hayward.
'Quite often they're very spur-of-the-moment or very hastily put together forms of attack,' Miller added.
'They're very diverse individuals. Some might be Muslim radicals, some might be American right-wing activists, some people have mental health problems. The profile of the perpetrator is very hard to define. The main thing they have in common is the act.'
'It subconsciously becomes part of the repertoire of options for people to express their anger in some way and they get exposed to it through the vectors of the media and social media,' Miller added.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Experts say cars have become a weapon of choice for assailants due to their size, speed and maneuverability. AP
Experts have pointed to myriad reasons why people use cars as a weapon.
'This tactic requires little or no training, no specific skillset, and carries a relatively low risk of early detection,' non-profit global policy think tank Rand said, as per Time Magazine.
A 2021 report by about how about cars on rent or in vehicle-sharing schemes are used found a number of reasons – including not much cooperation between police and industry, employees not being trained on how to recognise a potential attacker and not enough background checks on those renting the vehicles.
Ryan Houser, a terrorism and mass-casualty-attack researcher and consultant who conducted a 2022 study on such attacks, told USA Today, 'Vehicle ramming attacks have the ability to further democratise terrorism as a successful attack that merely requires a willingness to kill and can be completed by only one actor.'
'The increased prevalence of outdoor activities and gatherings in a post-COVID-19 world will further expose large numbers of people to potential vulnerabilities within security that place them at risk of being the victim of vehicle-based terrorism.'
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Pauline Paille, a specialist at RAND Europe, was involved in putting together a 2022 report for the European Commission on how to stop car attacks.
'It's a bit difficult to understand what the motivations are and if there is an actual pattern, or if it is just a collection of isolated events,' Paille told DW.
'I don't think this is a threat that is unique to Europe and with regards to the psychology, I think it very much depends on the kind of motivations and political objective that those who attack have.'
'A car, a knife—these are everyday items, often it's very unclear that someone has bad intentions with them until it's too late,' Bart Schuurman, professor of terrorism and political violence at Leiden University, told Euronews
A brief look at the incidents
London 2025: A 53-year-old British man plowed his minivan into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans who had been celebrating the city team's Premier League soccer championship, as shouts of joy turned into shrieks of terror, injuring more than 45 people.
Germany 2024: At least five people are killed and more than 200 are injured when a car slams into a Christmas market in eastern Germany. Police arrest a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who supports Germany's far-right AfD party.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Spain 2017: A man rams a van into people on the Spanish city's crowded Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 and injuring others. The Islamic State group claims responsibility. Several members of the same extremist cell carry out a similar attack in the nearby resort town of Cambrils, killing one person.
UK 2017: Darren Osborne, a man radicalised by far-right ideas, drives a van into worshippers outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, killing one man and injuring 15 people. Osborne is sentenced to life in prison.
Spain 2017: A man rams a van into people on the Spanish city's crowded Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 and injuring others. The Islamic State group claims responsibility. Several members of the same extremist cell carry out a similar attack in the nearby resort town of Cambrils, killing one person.
UK 2017: Darren Osborne, a man radicalised by far-right ideas, drives a van into worshippers outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, killing one man and injuring 15 people. Osborne is sentenced to life in prison.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
UK 2017: Three attackers drive a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. Eight people are killed and the attackers are shot dead by police.
UK 2017: Khalid Masood rams an SUV into people on Westminster Bridge, killing four, then fatally stabs a policeman guarding the Houses of Parliament. Masood is shot dead.
Germany 2016: Anis Amri, a rejected asylum-seeker from Tunisia, plows a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in the German capital, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. The attacker is killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
France 2016: Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drives a rented truck along a packed seaside promenade in the French Riviera resort on the Bastille Day holiday, killing 86 people in the deadliest attack of its kind. He is killed by police, but eight other people are sentenced to prison for helping orchestrate the attack.
Netherlands 2009: Former security guard Karst Tates drives a car into parade spectators in an attempt to hit an open-topped bus carrying members of the Dutch royal family. Six people are killed and Tates dies of injuries the next day, leaving his full motive a mystery.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
With inputs from agencies