Watch as an armored car driver displays nerves of steel

My favorite comment from the Reddit thread:
That guy is so ballsy he doesn’t even use a case on his phone.

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Reddit suggests that the courier was not carrying money but cellphones.

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Yeah, usually panic buttons aren’t so that the police arrive right away, it’s more to let crooks know that they only have a short window of time before the police eventually do arrive. It’s a deterrent in the hopes the crooks (if they’ve done their homework) will instead target another company without an alarm system, rather than to stop any robbery in progress.

Comment on Reddit with photos of the damage to the armoured Land Cruiser:

Ahhh South Africa, my glorious country, where shit like this occur a lot but these security are highly trained for it, I don’t have all the details of this incident but I’m surprised they didn’t immediately call for backup, usually they have a car tail them but I understand that in these situations you can miscalculate things and your adrenaline pumps through the roof.

Edit: Here’s a link to an article about this.

Edit 2: wrong article

Edit 3: Here’s some info

Edit 4: Screenshots for those who don’t have Facebook:

Screenshot-20210430-184030 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB

Screenshot-20210430-184039 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB

Screenshot-20210430-184043 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB

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Based on my extensive expertise in this area (having watched several other YT vids about the security situation in SA), they’re not calling the police because the police won’t come until long after the dust has settled. They are calling a rapid response team from either their own company or another private firm. But in the short term, it seems the driver is on his own, and knows how to do his job.

Just a little alarming that he’s on his own against bad guys who put head shots on both windows while both vehicles were in motion.

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He did exactly what he should have done. He prepped his sidearm, followed orders to prep the rifle for the driver, made the call as ordered (sidekicks sometimes aren’t allowed their own phones to prevent inside jobs). The assailant was on the passenger side of the truck so the driver used the cover the truck provided to engage. If he opened the passenger door he would have been sprayed with bullets. I thought he did perfect.

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And for what? Paper.
The world needs to reevaluate their damn values.
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend is one of those drivers… and could very well be considered a bit nuts.

Long story short, all 3 attackers arrested, both victims walked away unharmed, no cell phones lost, van needs some time in the repair shop:

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Bullet/fragment hole right through the metal frame of the door, where the glass didn’t cover.

Oh My Wow GIF

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This sort of thing happens regularly here in South Africa. This actually happened around twenty minutes from where I live. I only heard about it on Reddit though - it’s not something that’s going to be a big feature on the news due to just how regularly these things happen. Any time I see one of these armored trucks - whether on the road or at a bank or anywhere else - I generally move in the opposite direction, if I can. Fortunately I’ve never been close when something actually happened though. As for the trucks contents, smartphones are rather valuable here. The starting price for the cheapest iPhone is more than what the majority of people here are able to make in the space of several months - if you are lucky to be employed at all. There is MASSIVE unemployment here and with the pandemic making people struggle so much more than they already were, these things are happening even more regularly.

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There’s 3000 bank robberies a year in the United States (a number that’s down from its height). I hardly ever hear about any of them unless it ends in a high speed chase, or they know for a fact that it’s a serial group and they’re trying to get information.

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Someone posted that this might be the company that did the armoured glass. They seem to be a thriving company!

https://twitter.com/SVI_Engineering

Kinda sad though that most of the armoured vehicles in the thick of it look much less armoured than the vehicles that we in the USA think of as armoured. Sad that this is likely driven by economics making gun turrets a ridiculous luxury.

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This does not look like the kind of vehicle that would survive that kind of assault. Hopefully this kind of thing will give the bad guys the idea that just because they are driving a toyota truck, doesn’t mean they are a soft target.

typically armored transport vehicles have gun ports in the doors. This pickup truck conversion lacks that.

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Sounds like he said “Phone Rubby(?) find out where they are.” So I’m guessing that they or the chase vehicle may well have had a panic button. So either he got separated from his escort in all the maneuvering or he’s trying to find out how far away backup is.

You usually CAN’T roll down the windows. Bulletproof glass is way heavier and thicker than regular glass. So it would require a bigger motor to get it up and down and it wouldn’t fit in the door when retracted, especially since they have probably added armor to the door. The lack of pistol ports makes it less obvious that it is a valuables transit vehicle but more difficult to shoot back.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the robbers didn’t know what was in the vehicle, just that if it is in an armored truck, it is worth stealing.

which represents South Africa’s gift to the world, Elon Musk…the driver/guard or the gangsters?

Was thinking the same… the moment when the driver says we are going to be shot signaled to me that they were heading back into the initial fire

The company that was suggested above as the builder says that partially opening windows are possible, but opening and closing will be slow.

Note that only the driver and sometimes passenger windows have opening capability (armouring level dependent) and the opening distance may vary from only 100 mm to all the way down depending on the model of vehicle that is armoured. In general, the thicker doors of luxury vehicles allow full operation at B4 level without the glass causing interference. Most other vehicles (including bakkies) have limited window operation. This might mean that the door would need to be opened to get a ticket at a parking machine.

As the glass is much heavier than the standard item, the lifting mechanisms are changed in most cases. Even so, the operation may be slower than used to with the standard glass.

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I would say INTO the door frame. I think that that grey surround behind the frame may be armor.

On the armored HMMWVs the windows were on rollers and slid sideways. Not that you’d ever bother to open them.

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