After recently seeing one too many movie where a supporting character
gets into a car turns the key, and the car explodes (invariably when the
leading character stops to give a dollar to a homeless person, thereby
saving their life) I wondered how often that happen in real life?  I'm
interested in a a reliable source (govt stats?), the more detail the
better.  Please limit statistics to in the USA (Iraq might throw
numbers off.)

In short, what's the frequency of car explosions in the US caused by
explosive devices wired to explode on ignition?  World stats would be
nice extra, but not necessary info.

Geof

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 06 Jan 2005 23:43 PST

This does happen occasionally in the United States, but not nearly as
often in real life as in the movies. Rather oddly, the first two cases
I found were both in Arizona:

http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special01/

http://wildcat.arizona.edu//papers/90/53/01_2_m.html

Here is an interesting article, with a list of incidents. As you can
see, few were in the USA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_bomb

I am not aware of any death statistics for the United States that
include "explosive devices wired to explode on ignition" as a separate
category. Do you require precise numbers?

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Clarification of Question by abruzzi-ga on 07 Jan 2005 22:25 PST

Well, stats would be nice, though I understand it's not a frequently
referenced figure.  The Wikipedia page is interesting anecdotally.  If
that's all that seems to be out there, I'll consider the question
answered.

Geof

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 07 Jan 2005 22:33 PST

The Wikipedia page was the best thing I've seen so far, but I suggest
leaving the question open to see whether someone may come up with
something better. It's an interesting subject, and another Researcher
may be able to turn up some stats.

Don't know about the US, but there was a spate of car bombs in the UK
during the 80's.

Famously, a British politician (Airey Neave) was assassinated in 1979.

Yes - that Airey Neave event was peculiar

A mercury tilt bomb planted in the House of Commons car park

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/30/newsid_2783000/2783877.stm

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1495397/20050107/carter_aaron.jhtml?headlines=true

Makes you think, eh?