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Crixxa t1_j64bw4p wrote

Here's an article covering a handful of them. I had a student who was at one of the fatal ones and he sent me a video he took of the car plowing through the crowd. He could have reached out and touched the vehicle without taking a step.

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2021/10/vehicle-rammings-against-protesters/tulsa/

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dittybopper_05H t1_j64obmd wrote

I would take that with a grain of salt.

I looked at some of the incidents, including one that allegedly occurred not that far from me, and a lot of them are basically based on one or two eyewitnesses with no other information available.

And almost all of them are "0 injuries, 0 fatalities".

That suggests to me that they weren't actual attacks. You can't outrun a car or a truck. If someone wants to run into a protest on purpose to kill and injure people, there isn't anything you can do about it, they're going to hit somebody.

This case is a perfect example of that. It was an actual attack by a person intent on killing people, and he did. People who were running or on bikes* were killed (8) and injured (11).

I think it's more likely that most of those so-called "attacks" in your link where there were no injuries or deaths were people who were minding their own business, driving somewhere, and found themselves in the middle of a protest blocking traffic. Car gets surrounded by an angry mob, the people in the car get scared (we all remember what happened to Reginald Denny), and they try to carefully drive away without hurting anybody.

And it gets counted as an "attack" by people with an ax to grind.

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*As a side note, I'm willing to bet a lot of the people killed or injured in that attack were wearing headphones and listening to music. That's a bad habit to get into, because it lowers your situational awareness.

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Crixxa t1_j64u7n0 wrote

The one my student was at was a protest and the car arrived on the scene navigating at that point against the flow of traffic away from the blocked street, then plowed straight through barricades, and the center of the gathered protesters and drove away.

I have never seen a protest with even a third of the ppl in attendance wearing headphones. That is such a weird point to try to make. It seems like you're reaching to justify violence.

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Maleficent_Tie4767 t1_j659v6p wrote

“So-called attacks” he says. Methinks he’s the one with an axe to grind…

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dittybopper_05H t1_j6hw44v wrote

Not really. I don't really have a dog in that fight.

But I did notice a lot of those incidents at that site (probably a majority, but I didn't count) were 0 injuries, 0 fatalities, which again suggests that they weren't really attacks. If they were intentional attacks, I would expect a injuries and fatalities. But we don't see that.

I mean, it's not like there is room for misinterpretation when you're really mad about something, mad enough to be protesting in the streets. You're probably totally calm and detached and an impartial observer.

That last paragraph was sarcasm, in case it wasn't completely obvious.

That's not to say there aren't any vehicle attacks, of course, but I think actual, for-real vehicle attacks are far less common than that site says they are. Most if not all of the incidents that are 0 injuries, 0 fatalities are likely to be misinterpretations of what the drive was trying to accomplish.

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