Active Attacks with Motor Vehicles: A Short Report and Case Study of the 2025 New Year’s Day Attack in New Orleans, LA.

On New Years Day, 2025, a truck was driven at high speed into a crowd of people in New Orleans, LA, killing 14 and injuring at least 57 others. Though rare, vehicle-based attacks of this sort have a high potential for casualties and are increasingly used by attackers with connections to terrorist organizations. In this short report, we (1) provide a case study of the New Years Day attack in New Orleans, (2) give an international context by describing the prevalence of vehicle-based attacks abroad, (3) note the special attraction to the use of vehicles as weapons by terrorist organizations, and (4) give a descriptive analysis of vehicle-based attacks in the United States using the only publicly available dataset explicitly including information on vehicle-based mass casualty events—the Active Attack Data. We conclude by providing recommendations for the prevention of vehicle-based attacks.