Safety Concerns while Pumping Gas

There are state fire laws on the books which apply to self serve gas stations only. They dictate that some of the key components of a gas pump nozzle be removed which would change the nozzle from automatic " hands free" fill up to conventional " hands on" fill up. The thinking behind these laws is to make sure that the person remains near the vehicle during the fueling process. If the pump mechanism malfunctions or something else goes wrong, the person holding the nozzle will be there to correct the problem.

Is it important to manually hold the Gas Pump Nozzle while filling up ???
The pump will stop pumping gas automatically regardless if the lever is held open or closed .

Example #1 When filling up your gas tank hold the lever up constantly, and the pump will automatically shut off when the tank is full. You can hold the lever up after the tank is full and no gas will come out. What is the advantage of holding a gas pump nozzle that automatically overrides your manual control ??

Example # 2. Give the attendant $5.00 for a gas purchase and start pumping. You can't pump in more than $5.00 worth of gas, the pump automatically shuts off at $5.00. Again why should you stand there holding a gas pump nozzle that automatically overrides manual control?

The above events continually happen on a regular basis on the Full Service Island using the exact same equipment. It stops automatically without anyone holding the nozzle lever. It becomes obvious that there is no need to manually hold the gas nozzle.

If the nozzle mechanism malfunctioned and gas continued to pump all over the ground. What would someone do in this situation while holding the gas nozzle. ?? By holding the nozzle your body could discharge static electricity and start a fire.

If you are not standing close to the pump nozzle and metal filler neck you can't discharge static electricity to ignite the fumes. The conventional wisdom becomes tainted if you think through the possibilities. Anyone would be hard pressed to come up with a good common sense safety reason to be manually holding the gas nozzle in any of the above circumstances???

Gas Pump Helper has two obvious safety advantages.

( 1 ) Your engine is off. Because the car keys are attached to the Gas Pump Helper
( 2 ) You can fill up "Hands Free" and not stand near the metal filler neck which is the most volatile area for starting static electric fires.

Why do Full Service Stations have less Static Fires?

The Full Service Section of the gas station, has exactly the same pump nozzles as the self serve section .the only difference is that all the automatic components are left in place and the pump works "hands free". Now you have one attendant filling up many cars and not standing beside automobiles holding the pump lever up. It doesn't pose a problem. One large advantage of a Full Service Gas Station is that the pump attendants are not getting in and out of cars generating static electricity. Their standard movements of doing their job automatically discharges any static electricity from their bodies. They come into contact with many items, which are grounded and automatically discharge static electricity.