Smoking usually isn’t a big deal because the cigarette is up near your face, and the vapors coming out of the tank (as you fill it with liquid gasoline) tend to trickle down the side of your car to the ground - so you’re not likely to end up with a flammable mixture anywhere near the cigarette. Moreover, cigarettes often aren’t hot enough to ignite gasoline.
What can ignite gasoline fumes when filling your car is the discharge of static electricity. People who start the pump and then get back into the driver’s seat (often during winter to keep warm) and then get back out when done refueling are risking the creation of a spark when their hand touches the nozzle; that can be enough to light off the vapors that are present in that area.
One of the games in my high school was to throw lit matches into your car’s gas tank to see if they would extinguish before they ignited. After a couple of guys blew up their cars, we stopped doing it.