Hundreds of UK police officers injured in deliberate car-ramming

7 March 2025

Offenders who use vehicles as weapons against police officers are committing a “hugely dangerous and irresponsible act”, the Chair of Kent Police Federation has said.

Neil Mennie was speaking after new figures showed that hundreds of UK police officers were injured in deliberate car-ramming incidents last year.

According to a Freedom of Information request, last year 244 officers reported injuries after being involved in incidents where police vehicles were deliberately rammed. This is up from the figures in 2023 (219 officers injured) and 2022 (200 officers injured).

The research was prompted by a number of reports of incidents – in the media, from some politicians and from the IOPC – stating that an offender was "unarmed", even though that criminal had used their car as a weapon against police officers. Many car-ramming incidents happen when people are trying to avoid arrest, and can result in officers being seriously injured.

Neil said: “It seems bizarre that an offender can be armed with almost anything except a car when attacking officers. In many ways, it provides a comparatively easy way to attack officers with minimum risk to the driver, while resulting in serious injury or even death.

“There can be no doubt that a vehicle can absolutely be a weapon, and we need to get away from this concept of ‘You can’t be armed with a car’.”

Among the forces reporting high numbers of officers injured by car-ramming were Lancashire Police (28 injured officers), Merseyside Police (21 injured officers), South Yorkshire Police (21 injured officers), and South Wales Police (20 injured officers). The force with the highest number of car-ramming-related injuries by far was the Police Service of Northern Ireland, with 66 injured officers in 2024.

But 19 out of 48 forces – including Kent Police – were unable to supply figures of how many of their officers were injured in this way, due to the time and cost of finding the data. This suggests that many forces do not automatically collate or measure these figures.

“I am sure this is happening on even more occasions than the figures suggest,” said Neil. “Most of the law-abiding public drive carefully and safely, so they may not realise how common this hugely dangerous and irresponsible act is.”

https://www.policeoracle.com/article-library/deliberate-police-vehicle-ramming-a-growing-and-alarming-mode-of-assault/