Deadly truck attack on French Riviera a new twist on an old terror tactic, Stanford experts say

When a Tunisian-born man drove a 19-ton rented truck into a crowd of revelers celebrating France’s national holiday in the Mediterranean town of Nice last week, killing 84 people and injuring hundreds more, it was a deadly new example of an old terrorist tactic of turning vehicles into weapons, according to Stanford experts.

“It’s plausible that the message of ISIS resonated with him as a Muslim immigrant living on the fringes of society, which would be consistent with my research team’s finding that people who feel ‘culturally homeless’ experience a lack of purpose in their lives, which, in turn, is associated with stronger support for fundamentalist groups and causes,” said Sarah Lyons-Padilla, a Stanford researcher in the Department of Psychology’s Center for Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions who is studying the marginalization of Muslim immigrants at risk for radicalization.