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Comment by sidewndr46 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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