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Comment by senux | Hacker News Reader

Hands down the most fascinating part of this thread is the number of comments from people saying "in the US x is different" or "in State y it works this way". You go on reading and you see people contradicting each other because of course, different States, different solutions; different towns, different solutions.

It goes to show how much people think they know their country, to what degree they believe to know everything there is to know about their culture, history, and surroundings. Really though, we know very little despite what we tell ourselves or others.

I guess the message is: travel a little people. Even if it's just to the neighboring State for crying out loud.

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This!

I used to be puzzled by how anyone could ever drive off with the nozzle still in the car. I had only seen the non-latching dispenser, and service stations don't exist in my country. I was probably (shamefully) thinking something along the lines of "dumb Americans."

Once in the US, I realized it's a mixture of full service and self-service stations with latching or non-latching dispensers, depending on the region. And I do need to make an extra glance at the gas tank door before driving off.

Ha, I've once been to New Jersey where it's not legal to fill up yourself.

That was weird. Second only to the four consecutive tolls 5 miles apart from each other in WV.

You can't fuel your own car in Oregon, or you couldn't the last time I was there.

They made an exception for late-night now, to allow stations to staff just a single attendant who can stay in the store, while people gasp pump their own ultra-flammable danger fuel!

I'm from a self-serve state and full-serve weirds me out, so when I was in Portland I found myself driving up into WA to gas up my rental.

That's good to know. On a late night road trip up to Mt Hood I got chewed out by the attendant for touching the machine. I imagine a to. Of Californians make that mistake.

One of the low-key weirdest things about moving from California to Ontario, Canada was that, until earlier this summer, basically no gas stations ("gas bars") had the auto-shutoff triggers. They seemed to make a lot more sense here in the land of actual winters than in Oakland, but eh.

I'm not sure if you're using the Canadian "eh" correctly, but I'm not Canadian so what would I know eh

I've only been up here for eight years, so.

We use it both ways.

Interesting gas pump related differences between Germany and the US:

- German gas pumps are mandated to have a vapor recovery system, which sucks out the poisonous air vapors from the tank as it is being displaced by new gas. US pumps don't appear to be mandated to have such a system, but many still seem to have it. They also often have some kind of plastic or rubber seal behind the tip of the nozzle that prevents gases from escaping the fuel tank - irritatingly, this seal, which I consider a great and practical idea, is almost unheard of at German gas pumps, even though they are mandated by law to perform vapor recovery, and one would think that such a seal would help with that.

- The notion of pre-paid gas is almost nonexistent in Germany, and doing pre-paid gas purchases - including doing the dance of having to walk to the shop assistant twice or estimating the remaining space in the tank and only filling it up partially - are a typical "weird thing" German travelers encounter when they do their first US road trip. Pumps here in Germany usually don't even seem to have the capability to slow down fuel pumping when the money runs out, nor can they completely shut off the flow. There are a few modern pumps that can do this, they allow you to pre-select an amount (that you don't have to pre-pay, the pre-selection is just a convenience thing for the customer), but most of them can't. There are a few automated, unmanned gas stations where you "kind of pre-pay" the fuel by placing a hold on your credit card, then fill up, and finally you complete the purchase at which point the account is charged the amount you purchased. But the size of the hold is usually high enough to cover even the largest cars' fuel tank to be completely filled, so it is untypical to hit that limit. Because of this, I don't even know what happens then with regard of the fuel flow: whether it actually stops (because of the aforementioned technical inability of most of the pumps in Germany to stop at a precisely predeterminable dispensed amount, implementing that might not be so easy) or whether it just lets you run past the limit and sorts out potential fraudsters later (by involving law enforcement and identification of the customer via the credit/debit card).

- Switching between different kinds of gas (octane differences, or premium fuels) is usually done by taking a different hose from a rack of 4-6 hoses + nozzles attached to the same pump. The US-typical switches you need to press to choose your fuel type are inexistent in Germany. These have also been a major hiccup source for first-time US road trippers in my circle of friends: "Why doesn't the gas flow? I've done everything right...ah, I need to choose which gas I want first!"

It didn’t really occur to me until reading a lot of messages in this thread, but I realized how normal it used to be one going to a gas station to enter the shop to pay in cash. I remember as a kid whenever we went to a gas station my dad would always be careful he goosing the trigger of the gas pump to line up the decimal point on the rolling dial. That was just part of going to a gas station. You basically walked in put down a 2 $20 bills and said “40 on three“ for example. For you millennials, this meant put $40 on pump number three. But let’s say your tank only took 35-ish dollars in gas. Well you didn’t wanna be left with spare change, so you always just squeeze the trigger just enough until the meter read and even dollar figure.

For the first decade of my driving life that’s how I did it as well. But that now seems to be such a distant memory as I am 100% of the time just paying with a credit card at the pump.

The "40 on three" thing is something I got very used to during US road trips, because most US pumps didn't accept foreign credit cards in order to pay at the pump. I tried it a few times, it basically only worked on one or two out of ten. The other eight or so asked for a Zip code to be entered, and regardless of what I entered - my real German zip code, a US zip code from the vicinity of the pump, all zeroes - the pump refused it. I could use my credit cards to fill up by going to the shop, handing it to the clerk asking her/him to authorize a certain pump, which they would usually do as long as they were allowed to keep the card in their possession until I filled up. Then after filling I would have to retrieve my credit card, which would then be billed with the exact amount I bought.

All in all a very inconvenient process, and I had to explain it to some clerks because they weren't used to it due to the locals all being able to just pay at the pump if they wanted to use a credit card. I quickly switched to just getting a stash of $10 and $20 bills from an ATM, estimating whether I could fit $20 or $30 worth of gas into the vehicle and pre-paying that amount, leaving a bit of space in the tank for the convenience of not having to walk into the store a second time.

In the US you'll find the vapor recovery boots in California for sure. Other locations too, depending on the state & local laws.

Paying before pumping became a thing when gas went to $4 a gallon several years ago. Stations had a lot of people driving away without paying and the amount stolen was below what the police would investigate.

You can often pay at the pump, and they way they work is they authorize a certain amount ($75, I think) against your card, and then when the station settles at the end of the day, the actual amount will be applied. I have exceeded American Express's hold limit a couple of times during cross-country drives, and had to talk to their fraud department..

Pumps with one hose are cheaper. You'll probably get a dribble of whatever grade the previous customer chose from what was left in the hose. But diesel will always have it's own hose.

The funny thing about precisely stopping the pump - prices in the US seem to always have 9 tenths of a cent added to them - like $2.599 per gallon. If you purchase exactly one gallon, and hand over $2.60, there's no way to get that tenth of a cent change. I expect it was originally a marketing thing, and now it's a custom.

Or mainly just read more. Traveling to places just to learn about differences is pretty terrible for the environment.

Having done a lot of traveling along with a lot of reading (often at the same time), just reading about a place is a good start, but there's no substitute for actually going there, meeting real people, eating the food, dealing with public transportation and the weather, experiencing all the tiny inconveniences and innovations that shape life. It broadens your worldview, confirming beyond a doubt that the way things are done in your town is neither the only nor the best way, just one of many, and that the people who live "over there" are in fact people, not just statistics.

I agree that the environmental impact is a big problem. But perhaps if more people traveled, we would be more likely to get the kind of international cooperation we need to tackle climate change systemically.

Nope. Having traveled a bunch myself and talked to many other people who have traveled, traveling to a place can easily be one of the worst ways to actually learn about how the people live. Being a tourist in a place teaches you nothing about the voting process there, the community councils, the property tax codes, etc.

Essentially, traveling to another place without living there for many months only gives you an understanding of the most superficial aspects of life.

> we would be more likely to get the kind of international cooperation we need to tackle climate change systemically

This doesn’t even make sense. People who live in the same cities struggle to cooperate on even super local problems like housing. Ted from Kansas City flying to Europe to eat a steak in Florence is not going to help anything.

Bending over backwards for the enrionment at the cost of living life is paperclip maximizing - the point of maintaining the environment is to keep it sustainable for our wants and needs.

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