By far most of us are saying that we feel it’s foolish to let it get so low that it becomes critical that you find a gas station NOW.
For some of us, that might mean having a 1/4 tank due to the distance to service. For myself, I’d rather not it get below a 1/4 for this reason.
RICK: (Trying to look at the gas gauge) Where is it now?
KRAMER: There’s still some overlap between the needle and the slash below the “E”.
RICK: How long are you gonna go?
KRAMER: Oh, I’ve been in the slash many times. This is nothing. You’ll get used to it. Just, get it out of your mind.
RICK: Have you ever been completely below the slash?
KRAMER: Well, I almost did once, and I blacked out. When I came to, the car was in a ditch, and the tank was full. I don’t know who did it, and I never got to thank them.
Last year I drove about 36,000 miles. My car gets about 36 mpg and has a tank that holds about 10 gallons of gas. Therefore, let’s say I get 360 miles per tank and must therefore have stopped about 100 times to fill up. Let’s use your time estimate and say each time took 5 minutes (if only that were true!). That means I spent 500 minutes getting gas last year (maybe if I always drove alone this could be true, but I don’t).
Of course I pay at the pump, for maximum efficiency. The time I spend turning into the station (possibly waiting for a break in traffic), driving to the pump, getting out of the car, getting my credit card out of my wallet, poking it into the machine, entering my zip code, removing my gas cap, waiting for approval, choosing my octane, waiting for the pump to start, hanging the pump handle back up, putting my gas cap back on, waiting for my receipt, getting back in the car, starting the car, and driving out of the station (possibly again having to wait for a break in traffic), will be the same, regardless of how much gas I get. This takes a non-zero amount of time. Let’s call it X.
So if you drove the same amount, got the same mileage I did, and have the same size tank, but stopped for gas twice as often, you stopped 200 times. If filling up takes 5 minutes, your stops took X + [(5 - X)/2] to fill half of your tank instead of the whole thing. Multiply that by your 200 stops and you get 500 + 100X as the total number of minutes you stopped, versus my 500 minutes. So if that stuff I listed and called “X” is under 1 minute 12 seconds, I guess you are right, and 2 or more hours were not saved. But it isn’t, and not only did I save hours, but I spent them doing something better than the horrid series of mini-waiting-intervals involved in getting gas. I hate waiting, so getting gas extra times is not for me.
Getting gas is a prime time to get carjacked. Your car is stopped, your door is open, you have to get out of the car, you are distracted by the process, and you may be in unfamiliar territory.
If I run out of gas, the carjackers would have to put some gas in the car. No one wants to have to put gas in a car they are trying to steal–what a drag. They’ll move on to a better prospect, maybe you!
Crime can happen anywhere. If avoiding “shady-looking” places was sufficient, crime would be a much smaller problem. I don’t know what “shady-looking” people or places look like anyway, so my efforts to avoid them would probably not be effective.
Of course I am not especially worried about carjacking, but that doesn’t change the fact that the risk is doubled.
Where did I term shady-looking people “fascinating”?
My Dad used to store his Jeep Wrangler at my Grandfather’s house while he worked out of town for months at a time and encouraged my Grandfather to drive it every now and then to keep the battery charged. What he failed to mention was that the battery was very old and the gas gauge didn’t work. My grandfather thought it might be fun one day to take it out for a spin. The jeep said it had 3/4 of a tank but it was completely empty and a few miles from the house it died and he had to pull over. This is in a very rural area so he walked miles to the gas station in the summer and bought a gas can and gasoline and lugged it miles back in the searing heat. Finally the ordeal was over, except now the battery was dead! I’m not sure if he got a jump from a passerby or what but a fifteen minute joyride turned into a grueling hours-long ordeal. I wish I could have seen GF’s facial expression when he got back home but my Grandmother told me when he walked through the door drenched in sweat, all he said was “NEVER AGAIN!!!”. My Dad was definitely an asshole for putting him through that.
I never refill until I’m near empty. But let’s discuss what that really means. My usual fill up is about 14 gallons. My tank hold 16.7. That means I have about 50-60 miles of cushion there. Not sure where some of you compulsive filler-uppers live, but around here I could probably choose between over a thousand different gas stations. I can choose location, brands, whatever. I guess it I lived in Wyoming it may be different but I don’t.
I also don’t feel the need to keep the tank full for some imminent emergency. My 50 mile range will get me to multiple emergency rooms. There is 24 hour emergency vet less than 8 miles away.
I also am enough of a gear head to know how fuel pumps work. I assure you my fuel pump is in no danger.
I don’t get this compulsion to never see the lower side of the gas gauge.
And you are certainly more likely to be in unfamiliar territory, distracted, and have to get out of your car when you run out of gas.
Who says the car is what they’re really interested in? Per an older study from the NYPD Auto Crime Division, in nine out of ten cases the carjackers aren’t going for the car: they’re interested in YOU. Your person and your purse/wallet/jewelry are the primary targets; the car is incidental. If you are on foot and stranded, you are a good prospect for robbery, so no need to look at anybody else.
Crime IS a much smaller problem when you pay attention to your surroundings and avoid dubious locales. When the authorities give advice on avoiding crime, staying away from target zones is always high on the list: ill-lit places, deserted streets, places where gang members or people under the influence (drugs, alcohol) are congregating, and so on. Yes, you probably have a pretty good idea of what shady-looking looks like.
If you have a choice between a clean, well-lit gas station with security cameras and multiple clerks minding the store versus an ill-kept and poorly-lit unmanned station with multiple people loitering around without obvious purpose, do you really think they are equally risky? If you keep a reasonable amount of fuel in your vehicle at all times, you get to choose between them; if you are riding on fumes, you might have to pull into an unsafe location and invite trouble. (Certainly there are places in the U.S. where being of the wrong race in the wrong place is like issuing an engraved invitation to trouble, e.g.)
Sorry, those was ‘fantastic’ rather than ‘fascinating’ things that happened to you when you ran out of gas and had to deal with strangers.
I don’t think anybody in this thread is saying that you must always keep a half-tank; that depends on where you live and what you drive. If I’m just around town, I’ll let it get down to 3/8 or 1/4; that gives me a range of 80 miles or so (a bit more if on the highway without a head wind). The ER is about 10 miles away, the 24-hour vet about 60, and most of the other places I’m likely to need to go in a hurry are within that range.
If I’m planning to head out on the highway, though, or if there’s bad weather predicted, or even if I’m on standby with the possibility I might need to take a trip quickly, I don’t want to be stuck without fuel or stranded somewhere, so the tank stays fuller.
For people who live conveniently close to lots of fuel stations and have plentiful stations along all of the routes they regularly travel, it might be okay to let it go down even lower. People living in isolated areas or areas subject to a lot of bad weather would be foolish to let it go that low. If I drove something that only got 10-12 mpg (an old clunker or a larger truck, e.g.), depending on tank size and locale a 1/4 tank might not give adequate range either.
It’s the attitude that you would deliberately encourage your boyfriend to run out of gas, or not be at all concerned that running out of gas could be not merely inconvenient but outright dangerous, that I simply cannot understand. No, it doesn’t always turn out great.
Why would I be distracted? Stopping for gas is annoying to me. Running out of gas is not. If I run out of gas, I’m not in some tizzy of desperate confusion, oblivious to my environment, whereas if I’m getting gas, I have to read screen prompts and answer them correctly, thus my gaze is on the pump, not my surroundings.
You seem to think I just drive until I run out of gas and then hoof it every time. I run out of gas like once every five years.
I don’t tote such things around and can cancel my credit cards any time, so I’ll be fine then. Plus I have AAA and would just call them up if that’s what seemed to make the most sense. Then I’d even get free gas.
Nah, that’s where the good restaurants are. I’d be scoping out future meals, of course.
I’d probably choose the shady one, thinking it seemed less corporate.
I don’t fear strangers, it’s true.
Not everyone is exactly like you, nor do they want to be. Why is that hard to wrap your head around?
Because now you need to figure out how to get your vehicle out of the street, how to get gas, how to get going again, possibly who to call to explain your absence or seek help, etc.
And of course every potential robber just knows looking at you that you’re not carrying anything worth grabbing, right? Moreover, if you are injured during the robbery (as about a quarter of robbery victims are), you might not be “fine.” In an average year, for example, around 700 people are murdered in America during the course of a robbery; thousands require hospitalization.
That is an astonishing level of naivete.
People who deliberately put themselves AND THE PEOPLE AROUND THEM in danger should be called on it. Why is it hard to wrap your mind around that notion that deliberately choosing to run out of gas (as you claim you encouraged your boyfriend to do), or choosing to neglect putting gas in the tank, is putting yourself and others in danger? That has very real costs, ranging from inconvenience to the expense of accident investigation/reconstruction to lives lost, and that should be everybody’s concern.
I see my mistake. I was thinking it was either/or, but it’s both.
There’s no figuring to do there. Running out of gas doesn’t strike like a meteor out of the sky. I know when I am low on gas and I consider at each subsequent station I pass what my near-future options are–not just for gas, but what I will do if I run out. There are no decisions left to ponder at that point.
While how many people are murdered right at home by people they know who have a more plausible motive than the fact that I may be carrying some petty amount of cash? While how many people are dying in car crashes? The time I spend walking to a gas station is probably safer than driving/riding in a car or being around friends and family, the people most likely to murder someone (not my friends and family in particular, of course)? Statistically speaking, I like my odds.
Yes, I’m so naive thinking I can survive a trip into a “shady” gas station. No one escapes those with their lives, or so you’ve heard, right? :rolleyes:
Get a grip, I’m not opening fire into a crowd or texting while driving. This culture of fear and paranoia has really got you good.
There are some people in this thread that remind me of the joke about the guy that heard that most accidents happen within 25 miles of home…
So he moved.
Earlier in this thread, you mentioned you tried to talk your boyfriend into running out of gas deliberately. Not “consider his options,” but “I tried to get him to just do it on purpose.” Did you forget that?
Moreover, you don’t know in advance exactly what will happen. Maybe you figure you could get to station X, but when you get there all of the pumps are bagged–no gas for you. Maybe you get stuck in traffic, burning through your fuel while you wait for the road to be cleared. Maybe you coast into your favorite station and discover their credit card readers are down–you already said you don’t carry cash.
You can’t know to the precise instant exactly when you will run out of gas. Maybe it’s where you can glide to the curb easily; maybe it’s in the middle of a busy intersection, or on a blind curve, or right in front of an inattentive driver who’s busy texting, or any of a hundred other locations.
Depending on where it happens, you have several major decisions to make. Is it safer to stay in the car and call, or get out and to the side of the road? Can you push your car out of the way of other traffic, or can you get help to do so, or do you have to abandon it? etc.
Most people survive just fine. The ones who don’t, however, can’t come back to the message board and tell us about what a great time they had dying.
This isn’t fear or paranoia–this is common sense. You seem to have the notion that because nothing bad has ever happened to you, nothing bad ever will happen to you, so you don’t need to exercise any caution or judgment. Like I said, your naivete is breath-taking.
Consider it like this: most people who parachute out of an airplane do just fine and have a great time. Smart people, though, check their gear beforehand and carry a reserve chute anyway.
He was never able to articulate a rational reason for his fear. To him, it was bad by definition and no further contemplation was necessary. What is so horrifying about trying to get him to see for himself? I’m not a sorceress, he retained his free will the whole time.
I keep a few twenties hidden in my car, obviously. I’m prepared for plans to go awry. I also have a cell phone, AAA, and even a few friends I could call.
You can’t, because you never do it, but I can, from experience.
The car does not screech to a halt. There is plenty of warning, every step of the way.
I’ve already made those decisions by then.
You avoid death your way, I’ll do it mine. So far, both are working, so chill.
Plenty of bad things have happened to me. Actual bad things, not running out of gas. That’s how I can clearly see how trivial it is.
So you have a reserve fuel tank on your car? I’ve always thought that would be a good addition, but difficult to engineer post-facto and I’m fond of the cars I have. What kind of vehicle is it?
At best inconveniencing, at worst outright endangering, other people “just so he can see” is horrifying. I simply cannot understand how anybody can be that rude, inconsiderate, negligent, and careless.
If you have that much experience, then you’ve done this far more often than you’ve admitted. You are contradicting yourself, and I no longer know how much to believe.
Yes, I have reserve fuel on my car. It’s called “keeping adequate fuel in my gas tank.” Yes, it’s a good addition, which is why multiple people in this thread have been telling you so.
This has got to be the most ridiculous statement yet. -
I think maybe we should start a poll.
This has got to be a close second. So many to choose from…
Look. You might have 5 seconds. If you’re at a light or in slow moving traffic and don’t have a quick out like a shoulder, you are now blocking traffic. And possibly creating a dangerous situation. There is no debating that. None.
Your threshold for being horrified is remarkably low. If this “horrifies” you, what’s left for people raping babies to death and such?
How do you know how many times it takes? Maybe you’re a slow learner, but I’m not.
That’s not “reserve fuel,” silly. Nothing is “reserving” it when it is mixed in with the rest of your fuel.
You have to be sensitive to the car and how it responds when the fuel is “dangerously” low. Apparently you are not.
If you are stuck in traffic or at a traffic light, it won’t matter one bit how ‘sensitive’ you are. If there is no where to pull over very quickly and safely, it won’t matter how ‘sensitive’ you are.
If you make it a practice always to have at least (say) a gallon in your tank, doesn’t this have the exact same effect as having a reserve tank? I am baffled as to why someone would advocate the latter but spurn the former.