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Armed carjacking occurs on an all too frequent basis, taking place mainly in relatively populated areas: at traffic lights and stop signs, in parking lots, and in the driveways of homes. In the first eleven months of 1998, there were 13,000 carjackings. Fewer than one in ten carjacking cases ends up in court, and only one in fifty ends in a conviction. Moreover, people end up dead over this.

Being carjacked has become a major fear of every South African vehicle owner. In 1994, 17,560 vehicles were hijacked (another 91,786 were simply stolen). In the process, 36 people were killed and another 851 injured.

South Africans are fighting back. As the problems worsened and more temperate responses failed to have appreciable effect (educating drivers about how to spot trouble and avoid confrontations, installing conventional anti-theft devices on vehicles), more drastic measures have taken their place. In 1999, it's possible to get your car equipped with the latest in personal security weapons -- a driver-operated flamethrower called The Blaster.

The $650 device is built into the car doors, and is operated by pushing a button beside the foot pedals. It sends a man-high fireball from the car, engulfing the hijacker without endangering passengers or damaging the car's paint job.

That might sound like overkill, but consider this -- conventional solutions have failed badly, often only working to escalate the danger to drivers.

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