On July 2, 2008, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem identified as Hussam Taysir Duwait attacked several cars on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem in a vehicle-ramming attack using a front-end loader, killing three civilians and wounding at least thirty other pedestrians, before being shot to death. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that an inquiry indicated the attacker had been acting alone. A motive for the attack could not immediately be determined, but police at the scene referred to the incident as a terrorist attack. Three copycat attacks have occurred since then.
Wang Yue, also known as "Little Yue Yue", was a two-year-old Chinese girl who was run over by two motorists on the afternoon of 13 October 2011, in a narrow road in Foshan, Guangdong. As she lay bleeding and unconscious on the road for more than seven minutes, at least 18 passers-by skirted around her body, ignoring her. She was eventually helped by a female rubbish scavenger and sent to a hospital for treatment, but succumbed to her injuries and died eight days later. The closed-circuit television recording of the incident was uploaded onto the Internet, and quickly stirred widespread reaction in China and overseas.
On September 29, 2013, motorist Alexian Lien was assaulted while driving on the Henry Hudson Parkway in New York City. Lien had gotten into an altercation earlier in the day with motorcyclists who were participating in a rally called Hollywood's Block Party. One of the bikers pulled in front of Lien and slowed dramatically. Lien said that he struck the bike from behind, stopped his vehicle, and was quickly surrounded by bikers, who began attacking his SUV. He testified that he feared for his life. Lien accelerated, driving his SUV over Edwin Mieses, paralyzing him, and also running over several motorcycles. Lien then fled the scene in his SUV. A chase ensued, which ended in Lien being pulled from his vehicle and beaten. The media later reported that the involved bikers were members of a loose association of high-performance motorcycle enthusiasts known as "Hollywood Stuntz" who had previously been observed and filmed engaging in reckless driving and threatening motorists.
On 28 October 2013, a car ran over pedestrians and crashed in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, in a terrorist suicide attack. Five people died in the incident; three inside the vehicle and two others nearby. Police identified the driver as Usmen Hasan and the two passengers as his wife, Gulkiz Gini, and his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim. Dozens of people were injured.
During the evening rush hour on August 24, 1928, an express subway train derailed immediately after leaving the Times Square station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. Sixteen people were killed at the scene, two died later, and about 100 were injured. It remains the second-deadliest accident on the New York City Subway system, after the Malbone Street Wreck.
A vehicle-ramming attack, also known as a vehicle as a weapon or VAW attack, is an assault in which a perpetrator deliberately rams a vehicle into a building, people, or another vehicle. According to Stratfor Global Intelligence analysts, this attack represents a relatively new militant tactic that could prove more difficult to prevent than suicide bombings.
On 22 December 2014 a bin lorry collided with pedestrians in the city centre of Glasgow, Scotland, killing six and injuring fifteen others. The driver of the council-owned vehicle, Harry Clarke, said he had passed out at the wheel. A similar blackout had happened to him in the driving seat of a bus. He had not disclosed that incident on his heavy goods vehicle licence renewal application, despite such self-reporting being mandatory. Clarke was officially told he would not face further prosecution, causing protests from victims' families at the way the case had been handled.
On the evening of February 3, 2015, a commuter train on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line struck a passenger car at a grade crossing near Valhalla, New York, United States, between the Valhalla and Mount Pleasant stations, killing six people and injuring 15 others, seven very seriously. The crash is the deadliest in Metro-North's history, and at the time the deadliest rail accident in the United States since the June 2009 Washington Metro train collision, which killed nine passengers and injured 80.
On 20 June 2015, Alen Rizvanović drove a sports utility vehicle at high speeds through the center of Graz, Austria, killing three people in a matter of minutes and injuring 43 others, one of them dying months later. At one point during the attack, Rizvanović got out of the vehicle and stabbed two passers-by.
On 20 January 2017, around 1:30 pm AEDT on a busy Friday, a car was deliberately driven into pedestrians along Bourke Street in the Melbourne central business district, Victoria, Australia. Six people were killed and twenty-seven were seriously injured. The driver of the vehicle, James "Dimitrious" Gargasoulas, who was in a drug-induced psychosis, was subsequently found guilty of six counts of murder and was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 46 years.
At around 17:00 BST on 11 April 2004, a double-decker bus was involved in a collision with a car and a number of pedestrians outside the Fantasy Island amusement park on Sea Lane in Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, England. The collision killed five pedestrians and injured six more.
On 21 December 2017, at 4:41 pm AEDT, a driver rammed pedestrians with his car at the corner of Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, killing one person and injuring seventeen others, including himself. The sole fatality, an elderly man, died eight days after the attack.
On 10 February 2018, at approximately 18:13 HKT, a Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB) double-decker bus flipped onto its side on Tai Po Road in Tai Po, New Territories. The crash killed 19 people and injured 65.
The death of Elaine Herzberg was the first recorded case of a pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car, after a collision that occurred late in the evening of March 18, 2018. Herzberg was pushing a bicycle across a four-lane road in Tempe, Arizona, United States, when she was struck by an Uber test vehicle, which was operating in self-drive mode with a human safety backup driver sitting in the driving seat. Herzberg was taken to the local hospital where she died of her injuries.
The Charlottesville car attack was a white supremacist terrorist attack perpetrated on August 12, 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one person and injuring 35. Fields, 20, had previously espoused neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs, and drove from Ohio to attend the rally.
On 14 August 2018, three people were injured when a silver Ford Fiesta hit them near the Palace of Westminster, London, England. The car then went on to crash into the separation barrier of the pavement situated between St Margaret Street / Abingdon Street and Old Palace Yard. The Metropolitan Police responded within seconds and arrested the driver, Salih Khater, without further incident. An ambulance immediately behind the Ford stopped and gave assistance to the injured. Khater was subsequently found guilty of two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison.
At 13:45 on 1 December 2020, a man rammed pedestrians with an SUV at high speed in a pedestrian zone in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, killing six people—a 45-year-old man and his infant daughter; a 77-year-old man; and three women aged 25, 52, and 73— and wounding 23 others. The driver, who was alone in the car and had a blood alcohol content of 0.14%, was arrested at the scene.
On 11 January 2023, the driver of a black BMW X3 deliberately rammed his vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians and motorists on Tianhe Road in Guangzhou, China, killing six people and injuring 29 others. 22-year-old Wen Qingyun was arrested in connection to the attack, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed on 19 April 2024.
