“Vehicle ramming offers terrorists with limited access to explosives or weapons an opportunity to conduct a Homeland attack with minimal prior training or experience,” the Department of Homeland Security warned in 2010, urging vigilance against “attempts to infiltrate closed areas where traffic usually moves but where crowds are gathered, such as for street festivals or farmers’ markets". Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Research Center foretold further attacks by truck in the wake of the one in Nice: "The high-impact/low-capability nature of the attack raises the risk of the repeated use of the tactic in France and allied countries in the coming months, as well as copycat attacks in the following days". In France alone, there have been three attacks carried out by suspected Islamist militants that used vehicles as a weapon: In December 2014 there were vehicle related incidents in Dijon and Nantes, though authorities refrained from calling them terror attacks, and in January 2016 there was one in Valence. And in 2014, ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed Al Adnan implored followers to kill disbelievers "in any manner or way, however it may be ... run him over with your car." Lakeisha Nicole Holloway was accused in December of killing one person and injuring dozens more by mowing down pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip, while Army veteran Shawn Nelson stole a tank and went on a rampage in San Diego in 1995 before a police officer shot and killed him.
– Authorities are hoping Thursday's attack in Nice, France, doesn't lead to a wave of similar vehicular attacks that are both easy to pull off and incredibly difficult to prevent. Back in 2010, the Department of Homeland Security warned of terrorists using vehicles to kill civilians at "sporting events, entertainment venues, or shopping centers," the Washington Post reports. "Vehicle ramming offers terrorists with limited access to explosives or weapons an opportunity to conduct a Homeland attack with minimal prior training or experience," NBC News quotes the department as saying. One expert says this method of attack not only can be done by anyone at any time, but they won't need to first tip their hand by traveling to Syria, contacting other terrorists, or anything like that. “Al-Qaeda and ISIS have both exhorted their followers to use any means to bring death," a counterterrorism expert tells the Los Angeles Times. "With limited access to explosives, large vehicles into large crowds are an obvious event.” In fact, both groups have recently suggested using vehicles as weapons. It's a method that can be extremely deadly even when used unintentionally, as shown in 2003 when an elderly man killed 10 people by accidentally driving through a California farmers market. But the attack in Nice, which killed 84, represents a new level of carnage for vehicular assault. Three similar attacks in France between 2014 and 2016 killed only one person total.