Car destroyed in fiery crash at US border with Canada at the Rainbow Bridge

 

The aftermath of the crash. ABC News/WKBW.

A car was destroyed in a fiery crash at the US border with Canada at the Rainbow Bridge. ABC News. No explosives were found at the scene and New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that there was no indication of terrorism. Dramatic video shows the car traveling at a high rate of speed and getting vaulted high into the air. The driver and passenger of the car were killed and a booth agent was injured. It is unclear what the cause of the incident is. 

🚨#BREAKING: New surveillance video shows the moment when the white vehicle went airborne and crashed at the Rainbow Bridge Crossing checkpoint before going up in flames near Niagara Falls pic.twitter.com/7I2JGM9aTw

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) November 22, 2023

My Comment:

The initial reporting on this story has been odd. First news outlets, including Fox News, were saying this was a terror attack and that there was explosives detected. Now they are saying that it wasn't and there were no explosives. I don't really trust either report. Given the incident just happened anything could happen. 

Though the government is claiming that this isn't terrorism, it's still possible it was. Without knowing much about who did this and why it's too early to rule it out. Car ramming attacks are of course a thing and this could be that. Generally speaking though, car ramming attacks target crowds, not stationary buildings. 

There are a lot of other possibilities as well. It's possible that the driver was drunk or high and didn't have control of their vehicle. It's also possible that they had some kind of mental break and did this because of it. It might even be a murder-suicide. 

Another possibility is that the accelerator got stuck. Watching the video it looked like there was smoke or something coming from the car, which could be the driver desperately trying to brake as the accelerator is stuck. However, it's also pretty likely that the "smoke" coming from the car was just water being pushed up as the car drove at high speed. 

Regardless of the cause I do think that there is a lot of fear right now of a major terror attack. When this happened everyone assumed that it was a terror attack on the border. It's possible it still is, but everyone was very sure because the threat is so high. With the Israel-Hamas war happening and a general threat from Islamic terrorism, it would not be a surprise if we do see an attack soon. 

Finally, if we do find out about this case I think it will probably be ignored. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and the day after that is Black Friday, a holiday and an unofficial holiday. If the news about this incident is politically inconvenient I expect it to be buried on one of those two days.