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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.

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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)

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

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.

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-"

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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