Don’t know if its just an oversight, but when I went to a newly renovated Mobil station (they’ve lowered the pump display/control for better handicapped access) and there on the pump handle, in all its glory, was the little clip, um, thingy, that holds the pump on so you don’t have to. Or in my case, so I don’t have to stick the gas cap into the handle.
Don’t want to start a GD about the safety of those things (its just gasoline, not nitroglycerin) but has anyone else in NY State seen them? They disappeared like 30 years ago.
I have seen them again on some pumps put in since Cuomo left office. If they’re new pumps they may still have that catch, though some are still being removed.
AIUI Cuomo hated the things, and saw them as a safety hazard, and had pushed a law through to make them illegal. One of the things that Pataki did away with when he came in was that law. Now, Cuomo made sure of enforcement of his law, so there was a huge incentive to remove the things when it first went through. The removal of the law had only made a situation where they were permitted - not required. So there’s very little incentive to retrofit existing pumps with them.
And, of course, not everyone has gotten the word that they legal environment had changed since Cuomo’s days.
Presumably these pumps still have an automatic cut-off when the nozzle detects the tank is (near) full, so the only safety hazard would occur if the nozzle fell out of the tank?
I’ve never seen a pump nozzle fall out of a car in my life, nor ever heard of it happening, but even if it did happen, I’d imagine the drop itself would almost certainly dislodge the catch and shut down the pump. I’m really not seeing the hazard here, but then, I’ve been using those catches since I started driving.
Really? Becaue the way full service works here, the attendant puts the nozzle in your car and then walks away to treat other customers or whatever. When it fills up, the pump stops and he or she moseys on back to your car to take it out and close up. I’ve never seen a pump overflow in my life.
Yes, really. It probably spilled a gallon of gas before I caught it. I was a bit concerned about starting the car, because there was a big pool of gas under it…
I, too, have had the auto shutoff fail. Only once in 15 years, but it can happen. There was a gallon or two of gas on the ground before one of the other customers alerted me to what was happening.
I pumped gas for a living way back when.
Do tanks overflow? Sure every so often. I doubt I have ever seen more than a couple of tenths of a gallon on the ground. It doesn’t take much gas to make a huge puddle.
More likely than that is a spit back where the car suddenly can’t take any more fuel and it spits a cup or so out of the filler. New nozzles with vapor recovery and shields prevent you from wearing that spit up. Even so I still stand off to the side, and not directly behind the nozzle when I am buying gas.
Do nozzles fall out of the fill pipe? Again sure, but not very often.
Will the nozzle shut off if it fall out? You bet
The auto shut-off valve can malfunction - I’ve seen it happen a half-dozen times or so in 5 years working at a gas station. Sometimes the fuel overflows, sometimes the nozzle is ejected.
Seems to me the bigger danger is leaving the pump in and driving off. Not that I would know. I can assure you there are passive fail-closed valves between the handle and the pump.
Usually when I’m buying the gas, I stand right in front of the pump or the counter, depending on if I’m paying with a card or cash.
Gasoline vapors are big ozone contributors, and the efforts put forth to keep spills/splashes to a minimum are really about not having gasoline evaporate into the air. I don’t think safety is the real issue.
Mass and Rhode Island. People who live in those areas seemed freaked out by the idea when I inquired about it, but they’re a bit more spastic about things anyway.
Not Mass - there are at least 2 self-serve stations I know of that have the nozzle catch, and have for years. So unless the weights & measures inspector never noticed them, I’d guess they’re legal.
That’s exactly the reason for disabling the locking mechanism. It has nothing to do with overflow. People leave the nozzle in the car and drive off destroying the pump and the car along with creating a fire hazard. It doesn’t happen often but once or twice a year is enough to have the owner of the filling station remove the locking mechanism.
I learned this from a gas station attendant who has seen it happen 3 times. He saw a guy in a Porsche do it. The repair bill must have been astronomical.
