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Comment by sidewndr46 | Hacker News Reader

The fumes actually make me nauseous basically instantly. My understanding is that modern vehicles can't vent the tank, so when you pump gas in vapor must exit via the same hole that the liquid is going in. So a fillup discharges ~20 gallons of fumes or something.

There is basically always wind where I live. The pumps shut off automatically. So I just turn the pump on and walk over to the curb, upwind from the fumes.

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This varies by state, but since we're talking about Oregon, I can tell you that Oregon requires fuel vapor recovery at the pump. Makes the nozzle bulkier and harder to work with, but doesn't discharge a bunch of fumes.

Washington seems more lax about it, in my experience.

oh yeah I stopped somewhere once that required this and banned the latching handle mechanism. It wouldn't actually allow me to put the nozzle into my truck so I inverted the weird rubber thing and shoved a water bottle into the handle so I didn't have to stand there while it filled the truck.

For a lot of cars, the gas cap itself can be wedged into the pump handle to keep it latched. The auto shutoff will still work.

I'll have to try my gas cap but I normally used my wallet because it was already out from paying if the latch was broken or missing.

It irritates me because we don't have those latches in the UK as it's illegal to pump petrol unattended - I believe this extends to the EU as its an EU law we've retained.

Do you have any sources? According to Wikipedia, this regulation applies only in Australia, UK, and Taiwan.

Germany and Italy have the latches for sure.

I do not, I just thought I read it somewhere years ago that it was an EU regulation... as you're saying it's allowed in parts of the EU I guess it can't be!

I'm not sure if this was exaggerated on our side of the straight, but here we read quite a lot about Brexit politicians (including Boris Johnson) complaining about made up EU regulations they'd have to follow (a famous example was the ban on curved bananas)

I don't think this was one of them, this was my error/misremembering, as we've never had those latches on our fuel pumps.

And don't get me started on Brexit and BoJo the clown... I'm still angry about that to this day

My truck doesn't have a gas cap

people shoving things into the handle is what got laws banning the latching thing repealled in some places. since it's safer to use something designed for the purpose.

I think this only holds for the urban areas (or where you have to take your car to the DEQ). Drive out to Hood River and no such thing exists. Maybe the state has allowed the rural areas to update on a longer schedule.

In my state auto-pump nozzles are illegal. Have to sit there and hold down the trigger breathing in the fumes the whole time. Really sucks if you're filling up a vehicle with a big tank.

They don't vent into the atmosphere, but the fumes go into an activated carbon canister that then gets sucked into the engine when it's running. It's been like that since the early 70s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_emissions_control#Evap...

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