On Friday, a man in Stockholm, Sweden drove a truck into a crowded store, killing at least four. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven is calling the incident a terrorist attack. If that's starting to sound familiar, there's a reason.
Three weeks ago, a man attacked the Westminster area of London, driving through a crowd of people to get there. Four months ago, a man drove through a crowded holiday market in Berlin. And nine months ago, a man drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. All three crashes were deemed terrorist acts.
Jordan Clark is the assistant director of the CELL, the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab.
"These individuals continue to use a wide range of objects," said Jordan Clark, an assistant director of CELL, the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab.
Clark says the end goal for terrorists is to cause a lot of damage in an effective way, and using vehicles is just another weapon. These terrorists also don't need and special expertise, like bomb-making.
"The use of these vehicles is a tactic ... a vehicle — certainly a very, very heavy object — can certainly cause significant damage in a very short amount of time," Clark says. "And unfortunately, this is something that we see way too frequently."
The attack forced Stockholm to shut down the city subway system and parliament, and also closed streets in the area surrounding the crime scene.
