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Back in the late 90s an inventor in South Africa came up with a shocking solution to the carjacking problem in his country: outfit a car with a flamethrower system. The device shoots flames from both sides of the vehicle, incapacitating attackers standing outside.
Volvo once invented a breathalyzer for your seatbelt.
How the driver uses the Blaster flamethrower system is ingenious. You just flip a switch on the lower portion of the dash and a little LED light illuminates, indicating the system is armed. When armed carjackers order you to put up your hands, you can do so and still activate the flamethrower since that’s done using a foot pedal.
Priming the system gets a heating element going, located below the rocker panel. When the driver presses the foot pedal, gas from the tank spews out of four jets on each side, resulting in a fireball at first and then a flame several feet tall, arcing up at the face of any attackers.
Likely, carjackers would never even see the attack coming. And we can imagine they wouldn’t be in any condition to continue the armed carjacking.
Back when the Blaster was first introduced to the market, police in South Africa said it’s perfectly legal. With carjackings far too common in the country, we’re sure authorities were glad to see criminals face some deterrence.
However, a news team interviewed a trauma unit doctor, who seemed horrified such a thing exists. He decried the “appalling damage burns cause” but didn’t seem to think anything about what carjackers might do to their victims, which includes rape and murder. It’s an interesting take, to be sure.
Others seemed to feel the device would cause carjackers to just shoot drivers in the head from a distance before approaching a vehicle.
Image via That’s Entertainment/YouTube
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