I can’t think why but this little detail about the incest seems more worrying to me than the self-service complaint. :eek:
Having lived in NJ for my entire life, I have always wondered where this idea came from. The law was passed in 1949 for the purpose of making stations safer. Apparently there are extra insurance costs that come into play for self-service stations. There is an obvious flaw in this logic because instead of paying higher insurance, you now have to pay for more employees. Basically they are saying that we are too incomptent to pump our own gas.
There is no huge support group because there is not a sizeable oppositon to full service. Our gas prices are generally lower then the surrounding states and we never have to get out of the car. The biggest complaints that I can think of are waiting forever in the summer on the way to the shore for a gas attendant and not being able to buy twinkies at your local hess.
What happens if you attempt to pump your own gas? Are the pumps kept locked until the attendent comes out? Are police called? Are you issued a ticket? What crime are you charged with?
My mind, she is boggled…
I have pumped gas plenty of times. They don’t arrest or ticket anyone normally and very few Attendants Complain. I understand why out of staters don’t understand why we would hate to see the law changed, but if you grew up with it and are use to it, it is rather nice. I have a nice boring Desk Job and a short walk into work and a Garage at Home. I tend to wear a Jacket all through the winter rather than a heavy coat. I am very happy to have Service all the time.
I think this is just a little like describing Sight to a Blind person. If you didn’t grow up with it, it is hard to understand why we would like it and would like to keep it.
Ask NYC people that come to Jersey often, they pay less here and get their gas pumped. I think most New Yorkers appreciate it.
Jim
As a non-native Oregonian, the explanation I’ve always been given is that not allowing customers to pump their own gas is that this creates jobs for gas station attendants. Or possibly that it’s an old law, but if we got rid of it we’d throw a bunch of people out of work, and no state government has the balls to get it over with. Oregon has enough problems with employment for that to make sense to me, but I’d rather save the money. Does anyone have any idea how much difference it makes in gas prices?
I had no idea that gas station attendants did anything except sell beer and take our money. I thought gas stations were self-serve everywhere.
Wow. An eye-opener for me.
I’ve been pumping my own for years, and in the little towns around here, the gas stations don’t have roofs over the pumps. In the winter, I plan my fills around the weather. When that fails, and I need gas when it’s 20 below, I bribe hubby.
I seen estimates that place the price Difference anywhere from 1¢ to 6¢ per Gallon. So the Experts don’t seem to agree. There are many station that run with only one attendant at a time and these won’t see any savings.
I lived in New Jersey for 15 years, and didn’t mind pumping my old gas when I went to Pennsylvania, and don’t mind it a bit out here in California. And I learned to drive before there was self-serve. The powers that be claiming it is dangerous when it is done in most of the country is just stupid.
Who is claiming that it is dangerous. The was in 1949. Nobody I have ever met thinks pumping gas is too dangerous.
It is just a nice convenience. That is all a very nice convenience.
I am much more upset over the Speed Limit.
Jim
I heard him on NPR on Friday and found his proposals well-reasoned.
He pointed out that you won’t *have *to pump your own gas, that it will just be an option in an attempt to help keep gas prices from rising.
He pointed out that there are clear studies showing that 55 helps save gas.
He pointed out that most of the roads already has speed limits of 55 or less and he was really only changing the turn pike and some other few interstates.
He pointed out that he would not enact the new speed limit unless he was sure there was a viable way to enforce it.
He noted that none of his measures were cures for the long term problem but attempts in helping keep gas lower for as long as possible.
How on earth could anyone be so monumentally lazy as to not be bothered getting out of their car to pump their own fuel? (Obviously people with disabilities aren’t included)
The South Island of New Zealand gets cold- really, really cold. Shovelling your car out from snowdrifts, pouring hot water on the windscreen to get the ice off it cold, and never once was it an inconvenience to get out of my car at the petrol station, take the fuel cap off, pump my own fuel, pay the attendant, and be on my way.
And, as someone else said, Petrol Stations have roofs over their forecourts so you don’t get rained or snowed on.
In fact, one could argue self-service will increase sales, because people are going inside to pay the Console Operator, and remember they haven’t got any milk/bread/coca-cola/smokes/whater, and are likely to pick some up whilst they’re there…
Slight hijack:
Gasoline being considered a hazardous substance is why you can’t pump it yourself in those states correct? I know in GA the law is you can’t pump unless you are 16 years old or older.
My questionis this, back in the day of all service stations being “full service” stations, were the laws different or was that just a product of a more service driven business model?
-rainy
Okay, hold it right there, pardner. States that have self-serve gasoline don’t seem to have been able to keep prices down.
That’s a line of bullshit. Prices will continue to rise regardless of who pumps the gas.
Prices in our state were higher (way back when) for full service than for self service. I know, I used to be a gas station attendant.
For the longest time there would be two rows of pumps, the self serve and the full serve. Full serve was always higher. I even still see this is some places.
But you seemed to only wish to respond to part of the point and prefered to ignore this part:
No one said that prices wouldn’t continue to rise. He said he is trying to help keep prices lower for as long as possible.
Did you read the article linked to by the OP? He isn’t even saying that selfserve *will *make prices cheaper, but he would launch a pilot:
(Quoted from the article helpfully linked to by the OP.)
The biggest problem with Corzine’s proposal centers on the allowance of more cars into the HOV lane. He selected the most highly trafficked area of the Turnpike to open up HOV traffic to hybrid vehicles. The stretch of road between exits 11 and 14 is already insanely overcrowded during rush hour. During my morning commutes into Lower Manhattan I have witnessed first hand how the HOV lane is barely efficient when there is considerable congestion. I can already picture commuters zipping into the HOV lane thinking “well how is the state trooper going to know whether or not my car is a hybrid if I am whizzing past him?” As What Exit? already said, NJ is a state of commuters and doing anything that may piss off those commuters is not going to be well received.
With regard to self-service, I am not really buying into his reasoning. Piloting the program on the Turnpike makes very little sense. Looking at this morning’s gas prices, Turnpike gas is averaging 8-12 cents more than gas in my town. Even if their prices drop by 6 cents, people will not buy gas on the turnpike. It makes no sense for a native resident to purchase gas on a toll road. It would make infinitely more sense to pilot this program on the Parkway since you can get on and off without paying and because of the summer shore traffic that will soon be arriving. People also spend more time (in one trip) on the Parkway than they do on the Turnpike.
Pumping my own gas does not bother me that much; at best it is an inconvenience. I feel like Corzine just told us that he is implementing a pilot program to do away with servers in restaurants in favor of buffets. Inconvenient to the consumer but most people would get used to the idea of being able to fill their plates with macaroni and cheese. Testing this plan in a location I will never use, like a tourist trap, just pisses me off. I have zero effect on the actual results of such a program. If you are going to introduce a proposal that may potentially dispose of an entire job market, the very least you can do is employ intelligent research methods.
Corzine’s ideas for mass transit expansion appear to be well thought out and I look forward to seeing the execution of those proposals.
I look forward to the end of his term. Useless idea. The gas stations will take whatever savings they get from fewer employees and then keep the extra profits. There will be no change in prices or the rate of increase.
Well, here in Ohio, I remember most stations having self service, and full service islands as recently as 1992 or so. Now it is the really small town, locally owned ones that still have the option to have the attendamt come out and pump your gas. I do know that as a courtesy, some stations will pump gas for people if they have a handicaped sticker, but others don’t.
Personally, I like pumping my own gas. I hate when you remove the nozzle and gas spills on the car, and I wouldn’t want anyone else removing it, and possibly spilling gas on my car. If I’m pumping gas, I only have myself to blame if I get gas on my car. Plus, is really not that big of a deal in the winter, it takes five minutes, and most are pre-pay stations, so you can put the pump in the car, and then pay inside, and then stay imn there until it is finished. The service islands are also almost always covered, too, so getting wet in the rain isn’t usually a problem.
I guess I can understand the logic of it being a “safety issue”. The law in Ohio says no one under 16 can pump gas, but that is never enforced. I’ve seen children as young as 5 or 6 pumping gas for their parents. It’s like the no cell phone use at the pump laws, and the ones that say it’s illegal to wait in your car while you pump gas. They are there, but never enforced.
Corzine’s self-service gas plan tanks
On the local Public Radio I head Corzine say he got 7 times the number of complaints over self-service that he got for the idea of raising the sales tax.
Jim
From the above link-
So, he was going to lower the speed limit to try and force more people to get pissed and stop driving personal vehicles? Oooooookay… Because in the first linked story, I thought he was talking about the gas savings.
We do allow some hybrid vehicles into the HOV lanes in SoCal, and it has made almost no difference in the number of cars in the lanes. I drive in them almost every day, and I hardly ever see a hybrid vehicle. Not all hybrids qualify for the HOV exemption- there are only a few models that are allowed, and they display a bright yellow sticker in two places so that they are easily identified by law enforcement.
Hardly an impact on traffic at all.