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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't always shutoff! I was filling up one of my cars a year or two ago, watching the meter tick up and up and up so not watching the pump handle/nozzle itself, just cursing the price of a full tank etc.

Someone in the car behind actually jumped out and came over to let me know that my tank was overflowing and going all over the floor.

No wonder it seems to cost so much :)

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You weren't watching it? Do people actually engage the pump and then just walk away and assume it will all work out?

Honestly, I do. My usual routine is to open the fuel hatch, check for card skimmers, swipe my card, punch in my phone number for the loyalty program (if I'm at my usual gas station), punch in my ZIP, grab the nozzle, select a grade, stick the nozzle in the hole, set the trigger on the lower speed, head into the store, buy beer, put the beer in the car, wait for the pump to finish (if somehow it hasn't), put the nozzle back, close the fuel hatch, and drive off on my merry way.

This all seems to be pretty normal where I'm from.

A word of warning, all that moving around is potentially† building up a nice static charge on your body just in time for you to discharge it through the cloud of gasoline fumes as your hand closes around the trigger to unlatch it, with well-documented pyrotechnic results.

† (sorry)

you'll discharge it on the grounded pump trigger before you withdraw anything with gas on it.

static builds up everywhere, all the time during dry winters, yet gas stations don't regularly start exploding seasonally.

This isn't a theoretical concern: there are numerous documented cases, even multiple instances with footage on <popular video sharing website>, so a notion of "this can't happen" argued from first principles isn't just moot, it is potentially harmful.

The proper safety advice is that if you've been moving around, ground yourself by contact with some other earthbound metal before approaching the nozzle.

Here's one for sitting in a car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6VKxmUPb3g

i never said it cannot happen. the fact that there are a few videos of this happening somewhere doesnt refute my point that the probability is still nearly zero; if this was not the case, people would not be allowed to fill their own tanks due to the enormous liability.

i'm certain more fires happen from people plugging in frayed cables into 120vac outlets without first checking the whole length of the cable, but i would not tell everyone to perform this thorough investigation before plugging in every device.

I didn’t take away anything probabilistic from your earlier remark, so I’ll take this followup as an amendment.

Actually, though, I do recommend that you inspect mains power cabling & connectors prior to installation and on a regular basis subsequently. Having received a mains shock from improperly installed amplification equipment it is not something I’d wish on anybody, and it is completely preventable.

As for people not being permitted to latch the fuel trigger, a quick read through the comments here and passim reveals that many jurisdictions do have significant restrictions on self service as part of the operating license for retail fuel outlets, including removing the trigger latch pin, or mandatory pump shut-off if folks are observed using a mobile phone, having a smoke etc. That last one is astounding but some people are just fucking stupid, who knew?

In general I try to avoid circumstances that have even a low probably of ending in self-immolation, electrocution etc and will happily follow (and recommend) basic and simple protocols to reduce that likelihood further.

But then, I’m one of those crazies that looks both ways before crossing the road, wears a bike helmet, gets a professional to pack his reserve etc. This year I even learned to wash my hands.

> But then, I’m one of those crazies that looks both ways before crossing the road, wears a bike helmet, gets a professional to pack his reserve etc. This year I even learned to wash my hands.

all the things listed here are actually a few orders of magnitude more reasonable, statistically speaking.

I forgot to include "Never run with scissors", which many of us learned of course from Clippy.

And wear sunscreen.

Well that's why I put the beer in the car before pulling out the nozzle: to force myself to discharge that static buildup.

Pro tip: you can also squirt some gasoline into your bong and slosh it around to clean it!

Is that beer can open or closed as you pull away in the moving vehicle... :smirk:

Well all that static buildup accumulates in the beer, so you gotta open it or else it's a fire hazard ;)

"Nothin' to see here, officer. Just practicing electrical safety. -hic-"

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, this is probably a bad idea. You don't want to go sit in your car either.

Um around here all the pumps have signs that say not to fuel unattended. So I never even considered leaving the pump while filling up.

Yeah, I've driven around quite a bit in California, Nevada, Missouri, Kansas, and Pennsylvania, and not once have I seen a sign like that.

I've seen similar stories before, and I'm wondering whether (some?) US pumps might work slower than ours? Or maybe it is just larger fuel tanks due to larger cars...

Here in Finland typical pumps fuel 40 litres/min, i.e. 10.6 US gallons per minute, which gets my car from near-empty to full in just over a minute.

Does that sound similar to you?

It definitely depends on the gas station. Some pump faster and some pump slower. 10 gal/min sounds about average.

I like pumping at truck stops (Flying J, Loves, etc) because they tend to have faster pumps.

I drive a pickup truck with a 38 gallon (145 liter) tank. So I definitely notice slow pumps and seek out gas stations with faster ones. I have been to many gas stations where they pump way too slow and I will just get a few gallons and leave because I don't want to sit around all day while it fills up and I don't trust the auto-shutoffs enough to leave it unattended. I have had one fail once and luckily was there to stop it before too big of a mess was made.

I am lucky enough to live right next to a Gasoline Distribution company and they have a really nice public gas pump that you can use with super fast pumps and all of their gas is ethanol free (most gas in the US has ~10% ethanol). So that is where I usually fill up.

Well so at least here in the US there are two different notches: one that pumps fast, and one that pumps slow. I always use the one that pumps slow.

But 10 gallons a minute sounds about right. My car (well, SUV) has a 17 (?) gallon tank, and it takes a couple minutes to fill at that slower notch.

Why the need for a zip code? Loyalty or something else..? Seems the latter considering the phrasing.

ZIP code verification is commonly used for credit card authentication at gas pumps in the US, especially before the advent of chip & PIN.

This is immensely annoying for Canadians who drive their cars to the US, although there are some built-in workarounds supported by the credit card processor such as punching in the 3 numerical digits of a Canadian postal code followed by 00.

When credit card companies started requiring pin&chip at stores in the US a couple of years ago, there was a special exception for gas stations, I guess because their pumps are a pain to retrofit or something. As a result, it’s an easier target for fraud.

Yah. Canuck here and find it an odd thing to require for gas of all things. I get it though for cc validation.

I'm from Norway. Zip code thing completely threw me off first time I was renting a car in the US. Drove up to the pump, whipped out my card and... what? Why on earth do they need to know my zip code?

Didn't know any zip codes offhand so ended up paying inside, which turned out I had to do in advance of course, another aha moment. Inside the cashier naturally asked how many gallons I wanted. I had no idea. Rental car was not one I'd ever driven before, and I hadn't looked in the manual for the size of the tank. I took some comfort that the cashier had no idea either. And so there I was trying to guess how many liters the car's tank might be, how much might be left and converting that into gallons.

Back outside with a conservative 4 gallons to pump, the guy behind in line kindly informed us of the zip code of the area we were in, for next time. Came in very handy.

>Didn't know any zip codes offhand

Not a fan of Beverly Hills, 90210, eh?

I live in California and I didn’t know that :( Actually, the only ZIP code I can remember is 95014, and that’s because I live in it…

Is that zip code itself famous?

Edit: this is referring to a popular 90s american television teen drama.

90210 is the most famous zip code in America because there was a really popular show in the 90s that referenced that zip code called "Beverly Hills, 90210" (commonly known as just "90210"). It had various spinoffs going into the 2010s.

Because that zip code was so famous an unrelated reality show was named "Dr. 90210" about plastic surgeons in the Beverly Hills area.

I don't think the area you were in had anything to do with it. The zip code is supposed to match the card.

And you don't have to guess the exact amount of fuel, you just pick a number greater than the cost of a fill-up and less than infinity/your credit limit.

> zip code is supposed to match the card

Yeah that I gathered, but the closest thing to a zip code we got here in Norway is four digits, and it didn't accept that.

> you don't have to guess the exact amount of fuel

Of course, but the cashier forgot to mention that I'd get back what I didn't use, and being a bit off balance already by the new experiences I didn't think of this myself.

I believe it's a US credit card thing. Not sure if anything actually checks the zip code nowadays. A long time ago, I almost got stranded in the US with my (European) credit card, and I suspect it had to do with not being able to provide a fitting zip code (different formats).

As others said, but more specifically, requiring billing zip code to match what's on file for the credit card can significantly reduce fraud, and that impacts the processing fees. Some merchant accounts may charge less if the billing zip code matches, some accounts might not have a difference in charges and may even actually charge a fee to do the address verification, but the reduction in chargebacks could be meaningful.

Are you a fellow Texan? Because this sounds like Texas. Nothing wrong with grabbing a little BBQ sammy from Bucee’s (or a cake ball of course) whilst the fuel flows around them parts.

Nevadan, but same concept. Hard to beat Maverik's burritos and a Monster in the morning :)

My hometown's local gas station (out in the boonies in California's Central Valley) renovated and now has a full-blown burrito shop, and they're probably the second-best burritos I've tasted. Always a treat whenever I'm visiting family.

The downsides to automation. More often than not, even if you are 90% of the time alert, you get fairly comfortable and not watching.

I do watch my car while i am doing some other stuff or looking at my phone, but seen some other automation related stuff that makes me lazy. Like not locking the door at home when going out, because it's automatic.

> Do people actually engage the pump and then just walk away and assume it will all work out?

You don’t need to walk away, I generally just zone out watching the volume and price display scroll.

I was watching the price going up on the display, and not the actual hole in the side of the car where the fuel goes in.

For UK pumps you actually need to stand there and physically hold the pump nozzle the whole time. If you let go it is spring loaded and it stops pumping.

Of course, you don't have to look right at it while it is pumping...

But what’s the deal with UK pumps stopping if you squeeze the trigger too hard? Drives me crazy.

That's caused by the mechanism described in the article. If you squeeze the handle hard you get a fast flow. This can cause the gas to splash back into the nozzle and cuts off the flow because it appears that the tank is full.

That may have to do with dead man safety.

UK pumps still have a hole which you can push a little rod through to lock the pump on.

Maybe 25-20% of the pumps in the US are the same.

It really depends. I'd say 90+% of the pumps I encounter have working latches (NW US).

When do you wash your windows if not when the gas is pumping?

One of my favorite monthly activities is having that two minutes to clean receipts out of my car and wash the front and rear windows.

You cant do that in most European countries as the trigger will need to remain engaged for the valve to stay open. So you just stand there holding the pump handle bored the entire time. I get its more safe but I wish we had the same system as they do in the US

There’s usually a little latch on the handle that you can engage so that the valve stays open and you can let go then. No need to keep glued to the pump, even in Europe.

You should still watch the pump though - you’re handling flammable substances.

IIRC some European countries forbid those latches, to ensure the pump is always actively watched.

You can always prop it open with the gas cap and let the diaphragm trigger described in the article do its job. Unless the air inlet is obstructed.

That trick doesn’t work for all cars sadly.

I have never seen a nozzle without a latch in Europe, however, 90% don’t work and just unlatch immediately.

People seem to do it all the time in California at least. I've never actually seen a tank overflow but if it did it seems like the potential consequences could be disasterous.

Maybe they should remove those flip-up latches if they want to prevent people from doing that.

What do you mean walk away? Do you guys have a lock to keep it on?? That seems unwise.

Yes, I've done this my whole life and seen many (most?) others do it too. I've never even seen thought it's a bad idea, because the gas pump shut off has worked 100% of the time for me.

Go to a gas station, start pumping, and lock it, then go inside the gas station to buy some snacks. When I come back outside, the gas is full and I can go on my way.

Yes, in many locations the dispensers have a lock to keep the trigger depressed.

It stays in place by gravity.

You don’t?

I’ve done this hundreds if not thousands of times and it only didn’t work once, for the first time, a few months ago when I was filling my UHaul in Queens to move out of New York City. It was fitting.

In some areas, they do not have the latch on the handle to prevent that. They may (also) have a warning sign saying do not leave unattended.

But you can wedge the fuel cap into the handle to prop it on while you wipe the windows...

I’ve been doing this all my life and didn’t even know it could go wrong. I just assume everyone inside the store did this too.

Yes. I do that. I've never even considered the possibility that it could be a problem, and so far it never has been.

One of my old coworkers used to totally and completely trust the auto shutoff. To the point that he didn't even stop the pump before pulling it out of the car. He would just yank the still running pump out and it would shut off. One day he comes in to work complaining about how the pump he used the day before didn't work and he got covered in gasoline.

We all just looked at him incredulously when he explained what happened.

No it doesn't always shutoff.

I had an incident where a customer told me "they spilled some gas". I go out to see ~20 gallons of gasoline on the ground (my best estimate - was a puddle about 16 ft x 6 ft x 1/2 inch deep)".

They were filling a huge motorhome, so it would take a while to fill regardless and they weren't paying attention.

I should have called the fire department, but was a dumb teenager working alone. Threw a few buckets of absorbent on it. It was over 90F that day and windy, so it took 10 min for most of it to evaporate.

The design uses a vacuum to trip the shutoff, and that's created by the liquid moving through the venturi, so one of the things that can cause it to not work, besides wear and damage, is if the liquid is moving too slow to generate enough vacuum to actuate the mechanism.

Haha, same happened to me in Spain two years ago. I stood there minding my own business like a doof until someone on the other pump were like, "Yo!! Watch out". Wasn't much, but still surprising.

This happens to me sometimes, too, though I drive a 1985 VW van. It seems to be related to the nozzle fit and holding it very firmly, but I find that today's pumps are pretty heavy, require a very firm squeeze, and are hard to hold just right. Maybe it's just an Oregon thing, where we are not allowed to pump our own gas. I've had licenses in four other states and gassed up myself plenty of times. Whenever I'm in Washington or other states with my van, I tend to let the auto-hold engage.

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