If it is something that has never happened it does not seem to be much of a danger. We used to hot refuel our helicopters. They do get grounded. But spinning rotor blades can generate a lot of static electricity. Even with the remote possibility of a spark, What is it going to ignite? You are outside there isn’t a concentration of gas vapor.
Have you ever been a gas attendant? I pumped gas for more than a year in NJ when I was a young man and the majority of people left their engines on.
Let’s see… go to the 1:00 mark
Here’s another one.
Granted, it’s not exactly an epidemic, but if you are pumping gas, being mindful of static is not exactly a complete waste of time.
This. You slide your ass across the seat when you get out, and if the next metallic thing you touch is the handle of the fuel nozzle, the static discharge can ignite the combustible mixture of fuel vapor and air that’s right in that area.
The good news about this and other gas station fires is that it’s rare for them to evolve so quickly that you, the innocent onlooker, can’t safely flee the area with your undamaged car. Here’s a good example of ignition by static electricity (at 1:00). After ignition, the fuel vapors rolling out of the tank (as the liquid gasoline is pumped in) support an ongoing fire, but it goes out as soon as she’s able to shut off the pump handle. The fuel inside the tank won’t explode: the mixture of air and fuel vapor in the tank (above the liquid fuel) is too rich to burn, so it only burns when it exits the filler hole and mixes with ambient air.
Worst case? a dumbass grabs the flaming dispenser nozzle and removes it before deactivating the latch (or panics and holds the dispenser control lever tight), and ends up spraying flaming gasoline all over the area, like this guy (another BIG no-no here, filling a portable gas can anywhere except on the ground). Then you could conceivably get hosed.
Must have been hell checking the oil level.
With gas prices what they are now, I simply don’t understand not saving fuel at every opportunity. Heck, I have been known to shut the engine off when waiting in line at a drive-up window. I believe that for any wait of a minute or more you use more gas leaving the engine run than you would turning the car off & on again.
Witnessing a gas attendant checking someone’s oil is a rare site in NJ (although it was more common back when I was pumping gas).
Can’t get the second one to work on my phone. Was able to watch the first one. I could not tell if the car was on or not. But the static charge appeared to come from her sweater.
Sliding your ass across the seat occurs if the car is on or not. What part of it is more dangerous or more likely with the car running?
And if you live in a civilized state there is no sliding at all since someone else pumps my gas.
Former Alaskan here. It’s completely common for a good percentage of people to leave their cars running while fueling. The colder it gets, the more people do it.
In very cold temps -10, -20, etc. it’s not unusual to see each and every car that is fueling up to be running at the pump.
Philadelphia suburbanite here.
I’ve recently within the past two months took note that the gas pumps in at least two gas stations close to me don’t have the sticker that alerts you to shut down your vehicle before pumping. I assumed there was some type of new safety feature that prevented whatever the danger was.
Color me as another one who doesn’t see what static has to do with the car running. I thought most of the static generated by the car was from the tires. Since the tires aren’t moving, no additional static, right?
Static doesn’t have anything to do with the car running. The static is from getting in and out of the car.
At most, folks who leave the car running might be more likely to get back into the car during refueling than those who don’t.
I don’t think it’s a hazard, but I do think you should turn the car off, if anything just to improve the air quality around the pumps.
Or move to NJ so you don’t have to get in and out. Or Oregon.
Well, there are flammables around.
General advice and some 1990’s statistics:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/729595/gas_station_fire_from_electrostatic_discharge_watch_your_car/
(Snopes says leaving the car running has caused fires, but makes no citation in a piece mainly about static electricity causing fires when refueling.)
A casual search around the internet leads me to believe too many service station fires are caused by impatient folks jockeying for position at fuel pumps banging into them or by careless exposure of gas fumes to open fires.
I shut all of the pumps down when I saw someone doing that (managment actually insisted we do that).
They don’t.
I’ve gotten gas 3 times this week since I first saw this thread, and I’ve been going out of my way to look for cars with the gas running. I’m in central NJ, and so far this week I’ve seen only 1 car running while fueling, vs. 10 that were not running (including mine).
By NJ standards, it’s been god-awful cold here the last two days (though not by Alaska standards I’m sure)
Funny, I live in NJ and I’ve never seen anyone NOT turn off their engine at a gas station. We must live in different parts of NJ.
I almost always turn my car off when filling up. The few times I left it running was when my wife was uncomfortably cold. I kept the car running and the heater on for her. She’s not always cold, it was just a few times, maybe 4 or 5 times over the life of this car which has 207,000 miles on it.
Anybody have a problem with that? Bring it.
I’m in Canada and live in Calgary (cold) and grew up in Northern B.C. (very cold). I have never seen anyone pump gas with their vehicle running, even in -40. It’s strange to me that people would leave the vehicle running. I don’t really get why…laziness? I mean, your car isn’t going to freeze up in five minutes, so, what else?
I’ve seen it happen once. I was pumping gas and a woman pulled into the pump behind me. The passenger got out to pump gas while the driver remained in the car with the engine running. Fortunately, it looked like the car was equipped with a mechanism to prevent this because the passenger couldn’t get the fuel filler cap open. I was about to call to them to try turning off the engine when the driver figured it out herself.
Leaving your car unattended with the pump running is not smart. I had an experience last year at an Exxon station where the automatic shutoff failed. The tank overflowed and gas spilled down the side of my car and on the ground. If I hadn’t been standing right there to shut it off manually, there would have been a much bigger mess and it would have cost me a lot in wasted gas instead of the $0.40 or whatever it was.
Of course, I felt wonderfully stupid afterwards anyway, because I’d been standing there thinking, “Based on the tank capacity and what the gauge was reading, I don’t know if the car should be needing this much gas. . .oh, well, it’ll shut off when it’s done.” Yeah, not necessarily.