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Comment by mongol | Hacker News Reader

Is the side to fill up evenly balanced between cars in average? I imagine there is value to make it close to 50/50 to simplify the logistics at the gas station. I was thinking car manufacturers perhaps had agreed so that some brands do it one way and some do it another

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No the filler placement is sort of a cultural or historical thing.

Usually European cars have filler on the passenger side while American and Japanese put them on the driver side.

Afaik passenger side fillers are more safe if you run out of gas and need to fill up from a canister at the side of the road.

While driver side fillers are more comfortable because you don't have to walk as far to get there.

I recall looking at a car to buy, and the salesman toted the gas cap on the right as the "safe side".

The logic was, if you run out of gas, you can refill on the side away from traffic.

Dumbest design reasoning. Plan the side, for an event most people never experience?! Or if they do, once... and maybe on a rural dirt road, not necessarily a freeway.

Probably wanted an excuse for moving it.

Do you also hate airplane regulations for their dumbest reasoning? You know, when they try to avoid one in a million situation saving mere 200 people?

While I have no issue with pulling up to the pump, I think many would prefer to pull up driver on the pump side.

And there is zero indication it will save even one life a decade.

Think of all the drivers pulling over and (gasp!) getting out of their cars for other ressons.

> And there is zero indication it will save even one life a decade

You're just making things up and present as facts.

It's also nice not having to worry about opening your door and hitting the pump.

Even if there was a single side for filling, direction of approach being random is enough for 50/50 utilization of the pumps — so I’m not convinced there’s a pressure to spread which side the tank is on.

> direction of approach being random

is this specific to a country? I'm not sure I've ever seen a petrol station that wasn't one-way

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one that was one-way; but my experience is limited to US, MY, TH, and VN.

In those four at least, traffic can come from either direction so you can have left-handed fills use both sides of a pump.

Costco and Sam's Club usually have their filling stations set up for one-way traffic, but offhand those are the only ones I've seen that way in US, Canada, Caribbean, and western/central Europe (though the Euro design of filling stations just off the highway encourages one-way traffic, it doesn't mandate it). Haven't driven myself elsewhere.

Huh, you’ve got me thinking now.

Here in Finland at least there are a lot of completely unattended pumps that once you exit the road it’s basically just a patch of land and you pull up in whatever direction you want to match the side of your tank to a free pump.

But in the UK where I’m from and just got back from this is maybe less common.

Why would it matter? Just park on any side, I've never been to a fuel station where the hose wouldn't reach to the other side if needed. Or since you said gas and not petrol, is that an American thing? Do you guys have short hoses thah don't reach?

We have big cars that it’s hard to get the fuel hose to get around without scratching the paint (or not reaching at all).

Our plugin hybrid has both a gas side on the left and electric side on the right. The electric side on the right is helpful in the US to allow parking curbside and charging the vehicle.

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