On one episode of Dog the bounty hunter, Dog's brother had his mace go off in the car. Imagine if that happened to you with bear pepper spray.

I live in hunting country. We have both a spring and a fall black bear hunting season. The bears for the most part are afraid of humans. In 1974 they created some no shooting areas near the provincial parks around some of the smaller lakes. It was found that the no shooting areas were the areas where bear problems became the worst. In the following years some of these areas were dropped as no shooting areas and made simply no hunting areas you can now legally fire off a gun there but cannot target animals. Once guns were again in the picture the bears became less of a problem once more.
It was the discharge of firearms that said to the bears Humans are dangerous leave them alone.

One of the very best improvements in this area was the invention of truly bearproof garbage cans.

Garbage bears are always the most dangerous.