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In article ,
says...
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:03:23 GMT, Mark & Juanita
wrote:

In article 3uLjb.357433$Lnr1.267559
,
says...
On 16-Oct-2003, Mark & Juanita wrote:

How about the fact that self-serve gas stations in the other 47 states
aren't going up in impressive balls of flame with any regularity?

I was consulting for an oil company earlier this year and got to watch a
video from a service station taken the day before. Self serve dispensers
are not allowed to have locking (i.e always on) nozzles. A woman in a van
managed to jam one open and got back into her vehicle to wait. It overflowed
and when she got out and touched the nozzle, the whole thing went up. I
joked (not appreciated by the boss) that she must have jammed it open with
a cigarette lighter. Actually, it was probably static. It does happen.
And some folks are stupid enough to override the safety features.

Self serve dispensers here in AZ are allowed to have locking nozzles.
However, the nozzles must be self-shutoff when they sense back pressure
(seems a more elegant solution than making folks -- especially older
folks who may have arthritis or other ailments) have to hold a nozzle on
while the car fills.

The automatic shutoffs often do not work. I've personally gotten a
gasoline bath at least a half dozen times...while holding the handle
down.

Then you must pump gas from some pretty poorly maintained places. In
the past 25 years since self-serve became the vogue, I can remember only
one time when the cutoff didn't work, and that was only after it had
activated once and I was trying to get the numbers to come out to a
currency round number.

I suspect that the local fire marshal would shut down a place rather
quickly were it found that its automated cutoffs were inoperative;
that's a hazard whether you are forcing people to get cramps in their
hands in the freezing cold while being forced to act like metal stops or
whether you have metal stops holding the nozzle open.