more true crime...

article by MICHAEL WINES here.

excerpts:
On most big-city freeways, a commuter headache is a fender-bender and a line of rubberneckers. This big city is, ah, different.

Here is a Johannesburger's driving headache: a stolen Mercedes-Benz rams an armored truck onto the freeway shoulder, four more carloads of AK-47-toting bandits screech up beside it and the 20 or so thieves encircle the immobile truck, guns trained on the ensuing gridlock.

Using tools powered by portable generators, they peel back the truck's roof and scoop out the cash inside. Then, firing wildly, they all speed away.
...

The thieves have innovated as well. A careful armored-vehicle robbery now may involve as many as 20 attackers, Mr. Erasmus said, split into teams that plan the robbery and reconnoiter its location, steal cars to be used during the attack and execute the heist. Major freeways are popular venues because their heavy traffic leads to huge jams that delay a police response.

Typically, he said, one team of thieves uses a stolen car - almost always a big Mercedes or BMW chosen for safety features - as a battering ram to drive an armored truck off a highway and, with luck, tip it over.

Other attackers fire at approaching autos to panic drivers and cause gridlock while robbers subdue the vehicle's guards and open the vault with a power saw, or sometimes even the Jaws of Life, usually used in rescues. Done expertly, a robbery lasts only a few minutes.