On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:23:24 -0700, Steve B wrote:

Autoignition Temperatu 833 degrees F / 444 degrees C

Gulf unleaded gasoline material data sheet (MDS)
http://www.gulfoil.com/files/downloa...edgasoline.PDF

And your point is? That there is no ignition source ...?

The point was to find whether gasoline, stored next to a fence, in approved
5-gallon containers, would ignite.

With an ignition temperature over 800 degrees F (MythBusters seems to think
it's only 500 degrees F so I'm not sure why the descrepancy), it's not
likely the gasoline will ever get hot enough, without a flame, to
spontaneously erupt simply stored against the fence.

Stored in a vehicle truck bed or closed trunk (or in the vehicle gas tank
for that matter), is a whole 'nother story because there could be leakage
and sparks and friction after a crash. But, a crash is a crash and is a
dangerous thing no matter what. If we're so worried about crashes, we'd
never drive anywhere so we have to take that risk in hand.

Assume someone drives 15K miles a year, for 50 years, that's 750K miles in
a lifetime. Assume in that lifetime, they have, how many? Maybe two, maybe
three accidents? Let's say five accidents just to be aggressive.

That's an accident every 150K miles. But you don't store the gas in the
trunk all the time; just to and from the gas station, which, for our sake,
we'll call 15 miles round trip.

I'm not sure how to do statistics, but, 15 miles out of 150,000 miles seems
like a percentage of about 0.01%. So, for any given fifteen miles that
you're carrying gasoline in your trunk, you have a non-zero (but pretty
small) chance of having an accident; and in that accident, you have a
smaller (but still non-zero) chance of having it blow up on you.

All in all, unless someone comes up with better math, I think you have a
better chance of having a heart attack than having your gas blow up on you
on that one trip to the gas station.

Still, I can't find what the laws are for California for transportation.
The Caltrans (DOT) site was miserable.