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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

New Jersey has a lot of these strange laws. They also force you to have full service at the gas station. The lobbies force the issue.

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I believe you can fill your own car if it takes diesel fuel.

(This is probably not that interesting to most people, not even those who live in New Jersey, but it might be some evidence for - or, perhaps, against... - the idea that this is a strange law.)

The last time I was in NJ, the full-service gas there was the same price as the self-serve in suburban NY. Maybe that's changed, but given the hug number of commuters in NJ, I conclude it likely that holy hell would have been raised of full-serve was significantly more expensive.

States impose different taxes on their gas. Presumably if NJ allowed self-pump, those prices would be slightly lower.

However, in the grand scheme of things, the eliminating the payroll costs from the gas price in NJ would barely have any impact.

At a normal gas station which is neither busy nor desolate, an attendant may be able to serve, let's say, 30 cars an hour. If they each get $20 worth of gas, and the total cost of the employee per hour is $20, then the prices would go down only a fraction of a percent if he was eliminated.

$20 / ($20 * 30) = 3.3%

Woops! I downgraded my estimates and never updated my text :(

This doesn't take into account the missed sales when stations are closed, nor the cost to the community of having police officers police this (yes, they do even though the pumps shut off automatically).

Those low prices are largely because NJ has some of the lowest gas taxes in the country (48th) whereas NY has the highest.

Additionally many U.S. oil refineries are right in NJ so they don't have to pay anywhere near the logistical costs that other states have to.

last time a saw a full service station I was 5 years old

Get out a pump your own damn gas.... jeeze

It's the same in Oregon. You're not allowed to pump your own gas even if you want to.

Unless you're on a motorcycle. Then none of the attendants want to deal with you -- they hand you the gas pump nozzle and you do the filling.

I don't know what the party line is to justify the gas attendant rules. If it's "consumer safety" then it's bullshit.

> I don't know what the party line is to justify the gas attendant rules.

Blatant employment protectionism. Every time it comes up on a ballot the "statement in favor" is always primarily employment protectionism. The arguments are generally of the form "if we allowed self service, nobody would pay for full service, and those jobs would go away".

As with many similarly obnoxious laws: Portland votes for it, the rest of Oregon votes against it, and Portland wins.

Who actually lobbies for it? I can't imagine that gas station attendants themselves have much sway, and I don't see why station owners would want to keep it that way.

Is it just regular old people in Portland who honestly believe it is best, even without any lobbying or propaganda?

People aren't smart. They like full-service, and they know it'd disappear if it wasn't the law. What they don't realise is that the reason it'd disappear is that they don't like it enough to pay extra for it.

The stations themselves might not be against full-service, either (at least away from state borders.) It's an extra cost, true, but it's paid by all of their competitors, too, so it just drives prices up. Demand is pretty inelastic, so profits aren't much affected. This might change with electric and fuel-efficient cars becoming more common, but it's hard to think long-term when you're selling oil.

There are a couple of petrol stations near me that have recently started offering optional attendant service at peak periods, for no extra charge. This has been some time coming, I must say; last time I saw attendant service, it was probably the mid 1980s, and that petrol station was famous for being the only place in town that offered it. But anyway - even if it's got rid of, it may yet come back.

(I have no idea what's caused this. My personal theory is that it improves throughput at busy periods; many UK petrol stations have closed over the past 10-15 years due to the wafer-thin profit margins so those that are left can often get quite busy. But that's just a guess.)

Alternatively, it could be that people do like full service enough to pay for this, but act irrationally at the pump, not the ballot box. I.e. people undervalue their own comfort and do things themselves because the idea of paying more seems so objectionable.

This has occurred to me with airlines as well - we relentlessly optimise for cheap flights, and then complain that we're crammed in to tiny seats while flight attendants hawk duty free goods to us. Maybe we'd actually be happier if the cheapest flights were actually 50% more expensive and nicer, even though that's not what we choose.

Cool idea. Reading your post I thought, "This is obviously wrong," but it's growing on me the more I think about it (making it the best kind of comment to read.)

I experience the same thing with charitable giving. While I think I give a reasonable-ish amount out of pocket compared to most people, I absolutely don't give enough to match my ideals - fundamentally, the money is there, in my pocket, and it's hard to part with. On the other hand, at the ballot box, I always vote for parties that tend more redistributive (and since I earn decently, likely to raise my taxes). It's a much easier decision to make when there's that degree of separation.

Shouldn't you vote for the party that's best for the less-well off, and not the one that most redistributive? (OK, if you are eg in the US, there's not that much choice in the first place.)

I live in the UK, which like the US has serious problems with income gaps and class mobility. When I say redistributive, I should clarify that I don't just mean 'here poor person, have some money', but more that I would aim towards a more Scandinavian-style economy, where more money/effort is spent on social programs.

I figure this will change soon enough, now that $15 minimum wage laws are becoming popular causes in this neck of the woods. The broken-window fallacy is about to get really expensive for Oregonians.

All they need is a good advertising campaign. Another poster put the cost of a dedicated pumping employee at a 3.3% of fuel served. That's 11-12 cents per gallon in Oregon. Consumers would be all for that, assuming they knew about it (and could be confident it would be passed on to them.)

Yeah, last time I filled up in NJ one of the attendants was smoking at the pumps. Never been so nervous!

I have tried to light gasoline with a cigarette. After several hours of trying, I finally figured out how to do it. It requires smoking the cigarette with vacuum cleaner, while spraying compressed oxygen. You then get a small flame on the paper which will ignite the gas.

My tests suggest pumping gas wearing a sweater is probably more dangerous than smoking. Igniting vapors with a static spark is actually much easier.

If you car is newer than 2006, there is basically zero chance you are in any danger. The ORVR systems are a really nice piece of engineering that is mandatory.

The problem is not the cigarette itself but the flame used to ignite the cigarette in the first place.

I once had a sweet, innocent, virgin girlfriend who was raised in New Jersey. She arrived in Califirnia, and We started to go out. As I got to know her--I saw the New Jersey upbringing peak out. I started slowly. Her major in college changed to business. She believed it was O.k. to cheat in order to pass a test. She believed it was just fine to step on people to get ahead. She would make a sandwich, after sex, and always give me the smaller half. Oh yea, she really didn't care about the homeless, animals, or anyone other than herself and mom. At first--I just thought she was young and naive, but after awhile I think New Jersey rubbed off? I always thought what I would say to her if I ran into her. I think it would be, "Let's go to France and live out The last Tango in Paris, without the fingernail scene, and the gunshot." Yea--She had a body that was well spectacular.

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