ATMs Armed with Pepper Spray in South Africa

Absa Bank in South Africa began equipping its ATM machines with pepper spray, to be deployed against peopel who try to tamper with the cash machines.

Equipping an ATM machine to squirt pepper spray at users: what could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, as you probably already guessed:

The pepper spray permeated throughout the Western Cape mall which hosts the armed machines, which were deemed "high risk" for purposes of testing the anti-crime technology. Unfortunatley, the ATMs themselves are high risk at the moment.

South Africa is no stranger to aggressive anti-crime measures, such as car-mounted flamethrowers.