One thing I noticed in this discussion, is that American pumps seem to have a catch so that you can let go while it is working. In the UK, you only find this on commercial pumps, and then, not very often. Health and safety I suppose.
Tip - if you are over here and hire a diesel car, do not use a commercial pump. They are much faster than normal (if you are pumping two/three hundred litres they need to be) and you are highly likely to get a diesel-soaked leg.
Our 56 Nash had the gas filler under the tail light.
My understanding is that they stopped putting them on the rear of cars because rear end collisions were more likely to result in gas spills and fires.
But you’re saying ‘sure there is’ in response to ‘no realistic justification for banning self-serve stations’. I don’t agree with the underlying reasoning that can be inferred from that: ‘what is desirable shall be mandatory’. Some desirable things will always be collectively mandated, so no need to knock over a straw man by implying I don’t think anything should be mandated by the govt. But saying something is desirable doesn’t necessarily show it should be collectively mandated.
Breaking it down, you not having to get out of your car or ever have your hands small like gas* is not a rational reason for the govt to mandate full service.
The idea it wouldn’t affect gas prices is preposterous. Of course it does. There’s no reason to believe the return on capital in the gas station business is simply lower in NJ. And obviously the labor cost is higher, so the product cost must be. Just because you can’t clearly see that difference because of gas tax or other differences between stations either side of a start border doesn’t mean the extra cost magically disappears. It’s not necessarily large, but it’s there.
Mandated inefficiency to increase employment with semi-make-work jobs actually could be justified in some extreme cases. Not this one IMO, but that’s at least arguable unlike ‘doesn’t raise the cost’, and doesn’t come across as petty totalitarian as in ‘I like things so and so, so what I like should be required by law’.
*I live in NJ and only occasionally fill up in other states. When I do, I actually do sometimes notice my hands smelling like gas which perhaps people in self serve states come not to notice. If so, I wipe them off with a wet towelette. My hands can also get dirty eg. removing the caps on the tire valves when topping up the air or, less often, looking under the hood for various reasons. Your hands getting dirty: it can happen when driving a car. Not a good reason for legislative action IMO.
Gasoline actually costs more in NJ vs its neighbors, they just tax it ~$0.30/gal less. And that tax gets bundled into the displayed price.
NJ bumped up its gas tax last year (year before? recently) so it’s now higher than DE’s though still slightly lower than NY and still ~$0.20 lower than PA’s. Anyway I agree you can’t see the cost of full service just by looking at pump prices. And there are other factors like transport costs, for example if you looked at the whole avg in NJ, a state with low average distance from refineries to gas stations, rather than two otherwise similar stations either side of a state border. But there’s no reason to think that mandated full serve in NJ doesn’t raise its gas prices.
So they have. It was 14.5 cents for as long as I can remember. Now 37.5 cents.
I’m in coastal southern CA so its a long drive to AZ to get cheaper gas, but do people in the Northeast commonly drive to another state to get cheaper gas or have the state governments there colluded to keep gas prices similar?
I don’t know how they would do that, but IME people who believe in widespread ‘collusion’ in prices, especially gas sometimes can’t be convinced otherwise (absence of evidence means a wider conspiracy 
). Not saying that’s you, just IME often the case about gas prices.
Anyway gas is still significantly more expensive in the city of NY than adjacent areas of NJ though the state gas tax differential has largely disappeared. It’s due to things like transport restrictions (smaller delivery trucks allowed in the City) and land prices (there are very gas stations left at all in Manhattan now because of that). So, you can see that stations in NJ right near the tunnel exits are more expensive than ones further away, based on business from cars coming over from the City, particularly taxi-limo-ubers coming anyway but which don’t want to waste time=money going further into NJ (it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for a private car owner to pay today’s tolls just to come over for gas, although maybe if also going to Costco). You’d naturally see the same thing at any state border with a gas tax differential, more so if no tolls.
If it’s not far, I don’t see why they wouldn’t. I was at a friends house a while back and as I was getting ready to leave I mentioned that I was going to get gas before getting on the freeway. She said ‘go the other way, over the Mississippi, get gas in Minnesota and then there’s an on right there’.
For me, it wasn’t worth it to go out of my way and risk getting lost or turned around in another state. For her, it’s a horse a piece if she crosses into Minnesota or stays in Wisconsin on her way to work.
If it was miles (or hours) to get cheaper gas, I don’t think it would be worth it. In fact, I’m always surprised when someone tells me they drove to some other gas station 4 or 5 miles out of the way because gas is five or ten cents cheaper.
I live in PA, just a few miles from the NJ border. When the difference was nearly 50 cents a gallon lots of people around here went to Jersey to buy gas; not so much now that it is only about 23 to 25 cents less. The trip also often included a stop at a liquor store – lower prices and better selection at a store in a competitive market rather than the PA State Store monopoly.
I do always fill up my gas tank before leaving Jersey.
A what?
NJ is now the only state with the distinction of having a statewide ban on pumping your own gas.
People along state lines certainly do. With the tax difference, the price in Illinois is usually a dime more expensive than the price across the Mississippi in Missouri. Figure a ten gallon fill-up and maybe it isn’t worth people’s time. But, the taxes on tobacco and liquor are MUCH lower in Missouri than Illinois, so if you bundle your vices together, you can actually save a non-trivial amount of money each week.
In my experience, gas is notably cheaper in Missouri and Ohio than it is in Illinois and Indiana.
If every gas station in your state must have attendants, how do you KNOW it is not costing more? You have nothing to compare it to. Maybe it would cost a little less.
You can’t have it both ways. Either the pump handle is dripping with gasoline and essentially sterile, or the pump handle is crawling with cooties. Which is it? 
Gasoline costs no more? Someone has to stay inside the store to deal with people buying potato chips and cigarettes, so the pump attendant is one extra person on duty just for pumping gas. Where do you suppose the money comes from to pay him? Do you imagine he works for free?
I live in a suburb of Portland. I am in Vancouver, WA, on the other side of the Columbia, almost every day. The price of a gallon of gasoline is about the same in Portland as it is in Vancouver. To the consumer, for all appearances, gasoline costs no more in Oregon.
WA’s gas tax is ~$0.15 higher than OR’s.
We might or might be able to find reliable non-political references on the cost of mandating full service gas. But there’s no way it’s zero. You need more people. You have to pay those people. And there’s no plausible reason to think such a mandate simply and permanently makes it less profitable to run a gas station in one state than another, at least not far from the borders of relatively large states, where there’s no direct competition from stations not subject to the mandate.
I agree that full service must cost more, but the actual retail costs are a small component of the overall price. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=gasoline_factors_affecting_prices
They don’t actually break it down that much, but you can see there isn’t much left after crude price, refining, and taxes.
Maybe some people reading the thread really didn’t already know that retail station costs are a small % of gasoline costs. Since at least some people on the thread think it costs nothing to mandate full serve. So I can’t fault you for assuming total ignorance, it’s the internet.
But I guess most people already know retail station costs and profit are a small % of the overall price of gas, but also know mandating full serve must raise costs at least somewhat, and it’s ridiculous to claim it’s nothing. This dead horse might have been beaten sufficiently I think.