It’s OK. I agree with you. See the other parts of my comment.

So who do you think pays for these guys who end up on ventilators for the rest of their lives because they’re vegetables?

We do, in the passed-along cost via increased health-insurance premiums and increased hospital costs for everybody else, since the hospital ends up eating the expense of maintaining an artificial life. Not many Warren Buffetts out there riding sickles without helmets.

What a quaint but strangely distorted idea of “freedom” people in the USofA have at times. Freedom doesn’t mean just doing whatever you want whenever you want, it’s a reciprocal relationship with others.

No motorcycle helmet – no problems – individual choice, essentially no effect on anyone else. Those people can feel “free” to have their own head injury. Good luck to the “less free” head injury victim’s family.

Smoking in bars? How ’bout cars as an easier to understand example; we’re having the debate in Australia at the moment.

If the Government says smoking in cars with children is banned, has your “freedom” suffered? What about the children’s “freedom”?

Same for Bars. As a significant minority you’re still free to smoke outside. Cough to it.

I know, it’s like … anarchy. Or the way the country was before 1990, pick one.

Ya know, it being the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and considering the impending government takeover of the health care industry with all of the above-mentioned changes … ya got wonder, did we *really* win the Cold War? Or did we just just become more like the communists and the communists more like us?

You would think that with the Cold War won, we’d be *more* free, not less. But it really isn’t working out that way, is it.

So I called the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, and the DEC cop I talked to was sympathetic and said the problem is painfully easy to fix–simple mechanism, as you can see from the diagram at the head of this thread–and took down the name and location of the station.

“But ya know,” he said, “if you spilled any gas on the ground, YOU are by law liable, not the station owner…”

I’ve only had one situation where the trigger didn’t automatically disengage. The nozzle pumped extra 2-3 gallons out of the side of the car onto the ground. I told the clueless gas station attendant and she told her assistant, who I thought was a hobo because he was dumpster diving and wearing scraggly clothes, to clean up the spill. It had evaporated by the time he hobbled over. That’s what I get for going to the creaky looking gas station 1 cent cheaper than the Arco across the street.

Despite the savings of 3¢ a gallon in Oregon I always fill up on the Washington side of the river while driving south. Buying gas in Oregon is exactly as afabbro describes… a painful time waster.

When driving the oil-burners to visit relatives in central Oregon I always strap 2 five gallon cans of homebrew to the roof rack for range extension, though buying Diesel in Madras, OR somehow avoids the lines and waits experienced elsewhere.

+1 on that. Getting gas in Japan was delightful, especially when hot women in tight uniforms would clean the windshield, over and over again.

Then off to the street to stop traffic and bow as you pulled away. Charged a fortune for the gas but worth it.

Compare that to the scruffy hoodlum filling your tank in NJ who picks his nose while ogling your wife’s legs.

SUV drivers inevitably become whiners, especially about fuel …… Harden up princess (as they say).

Driving around in a 8 passenger GL retailing for some 80-90g… and you are complaining about the.. “metal doo-hickey” that keeps the handle pressed at gas is flowing.

I’m sure ya didn’t even turn the MONSTER off to refuel..

Wouldn’t driving gloves help with that… or maybe just holding the handle in…

Or if ya worried about the SHEER amount of gas ya putting in… ya could buy a smaller MORE EFFICIENT car.

Or…
Just have a pump installed at your mansion.. so it can be done remotely..

You’re wrong.

@affabro:

You’re right.

One more annoyance for living in the state of confusion known as NY.

Are there really more accidents/spill/fires/explosions in states that permit nozzle locks???

Yeah, I don’t get it either, but thanks for the reminder about the gas cap as I only fill the old bitch up maybe twice a month and I forget such obvious things.

My newest car though has a tether on the gas cap that’s just a few millimeters too short. Damn.

You nailed it! Same deal on the New Jersey Turnpike! But you must deal with it to avoid the higher prices in Delaware or the MUCH higher prices in NYC.

The lines are especially long during holiday travel.

Where I live in central VA, just about all pumps have locks, but I’ve noticed there are now signs saying you must stay next to the gas pump when refueling. I usually do a quick walkaround the car to look over the tires.

Amen, I drive 18 wheelers for a living and we use two high-flow pumps they tick off at about 1gal per second, its the best thing in the world. It pains me when I have to use my car when im home, and fill up, it takes an eternity to pump just 11 gallons.

And as it relates to the article, the gas cap trick works (almost) everytime.

If they were to come about certain sections of society would be pumping out fuel all over the floor/themselves then asking not to pay for whatever it was they wasted.

In most states, refueling goes like this:

- pull up and turn off car
- put card in pump station
- fuel
- leave

Take about 5 minutes.

In Oregon:

- try to pull up and instead wait for 20 minutes because there is a huge line due to all the incompetent gas monkeys

- finally pull up and turn off car

- wait

- wait

- wait

- honk horn and then be put on the “ignore that impatient dude” list, so wait some more

- finally make eye contact with minimum-wage worker who saunters over to your car with all the urgency of a government official

- say something like “fill it up with regular, please”

- deal with confused looks. You’d think that even a Spanish-speaking immigrant would learn the few phrases vital to the gas-pumping trade, but then, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the same gas station attendant for more than one visit. Turnover is apparently daily.

- finally convey what you want

- watch gas monkey struggle with station, and finally insert pump

- honk because he’s walked off with your card

- listen as the gas pump “kerchunks” after 20 seconds and stops pumping

- realize you’re going to wait 5-10 minutes for the gas monkey to return because he assumes it’s still filling

- honk

- be ignored

- finally watch gas monkey come over and remove pump and put in station and press YES for receipt

- listen to gas monkey say “hajaniday” as he hands you the receipt

- explain that you wanted more than 50 cents worth of gas

- listen to joke in Spanish or Farsi

- watch gas monkey shuffle back to station

- watch him come back and ask you to open the gas cap again

- shuffle back

- card back in, pump started

- repeat the kerchunk/50-cent/retry a few times

- wait for manager to come over and retrain while you wait

…etcetera…eventually you realize it’d be faster to genetically engineer dinosaurs, grow them, kill them, recover the fossil fuels, and refine your own gas than to visit a typical Oregon gas station.

And if you want to get gas for your lawn mower, maybe at the same time you want to get gas for your car, take all of the above aggrevation and multiply by 10.

People are too damn stupid to run them. I have seen people drop them, get a phone call and forget it was clipped “on” and pulled it out, drive off while it was filling their tank, try and lock it on before putting in the car not realizing that gas would come out too etc etc.

The solution is not to mandate full serve. I can testify that many of my co-workers were quite stupid. I have an excuse for working there, I was a teenager. They were 50. And now as a gown up who owns a very beautiful fuel picky car (bi-turbo, need ultra-mega-supper-premium), there is no way I would let some stranger, who is most likely stupid, touch let alone put gas in my car.

My solution is to suck it up princess and hold the trigger down. Such an American thing to complain about :)