Vehicle ramming attacks (VRAs) involve the use of a vehicle as the primary weapon to target pedestrians–including civilians, police officers, and soldiers (Williams et al. 2022). Over the past twenty years, VRAs have been a common terrorist tactic in the Middle East, Europe, and the USA. These types of attack are particularly common in lone wolf attacks due the low level of planning required (Williams et al. 2022). Beyond terrorist attacks, there have been many documented attacks conducted for other reasons–whether due to personal motivations, mental illness, drugs and alcohol, or a combination of these. Despite this, the focus of much academic research has been on terrorist VRAs–likely due to the limited availability of a comprehensive source of data on these attacks and the challenges of collecting this data.
The goal of this project is to map VRAs world-wide from 2000 to the present day (with periodic updates). The criteria for an attack’s inclusion in the dataset are adapted from the work of Miller and Hayward (2019):
The vehicle had to be used as a weapon on a primary target of pedestrians or bicyclists (including civilians, police officers, and military forces). Attacks where vehicles were rammed into buildings or into other vehicles are excluded.
The vehicle had to be one of the primary weapons, intended to hit pedestrians. Other weapons (i.e., knives or guns) could be used during the attack.
The vehicle had to be intended to be used as a ramming device, not a bomb.
Civilian injuries or casualties were intended and not part of a chase, evasion, or accident.
We pull together data on VRAs from several sources to create this dataset:
Wikipedia (List of Vehicle Ramming Attacks; List of Rampage Killers in China; List of Vehicle Ramming Incidents During George Floyd Protests)
The Global Terrorism Database, 2000 -2021 (Link)
Several news articles that detail recent attacks or focus on a specific geographical area (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Several academic articles and organizational reports that have collected data on VRAs (Counter Extremism Project, Jenkins & Butterworth 2019, Miller & Hayward 2019, Williams et al. 2022, Rodde & Olmstead 2025, Nowacki et al. 2025)
The dataset will be made publicly available once final validation is complete (expected early 2026).
Genevieve is a recent graduate from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, completing a graduate diploma in communications. She earned her BA in History from the Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands. Her research interests are power disparities in environmental policy-making; inequities in the distribution of nature-accessibility and the effects of climate change in urban environments; and the connections between community strength, stability and climate resilience.
As a contributor on this project, she assists with the collection and verification of vehicle ramming attack data, collecting current and archived news source data to record the details of each attack (e.g., details, vehicle types, motive, and date and time). She also assisted in developing the map shown on this page.