Wednesday, January 03, 2018

Full service gas stations, they used to be common, and evolved from marketing attempts to get business, then nearly disappeared like most fads, when "mom n pop" gas stations lost out to corporations who were to cheap to cater to customers


And now, Oregon loses it's historical abnormality of being the last west coast state that required every filling station be staffed by attendants who pump your gas for you. (It's still probably the only physician assisted, suicide legal state though.)

Back in 1951, when Oregon mandated that only trained station workers could put "Class 1 flammable liquids" into cars, the state mainly didn't want people accidentally blowing things up.

This ignored that the rest of the human race seems 99.9 percent capable of pumping gas with no formal training, and even, in many cases, being able to walk and chew gum without falling from the car to the pump. Not running into the pumps, or trying to pull away while the filling nozzle is still in the car's filling neck, well, those are still the easy to see signs of morons, idiots, and people who simply MUST make a phone call while pumping a dozen gallons of a very dangerous liquid into something they can barely drive adequately.

In fact, the old state law from 1951 contains 17 justifications for the self-serve ban. They run the gamut from protecting small children left in cars to preventing spills to keeping older drivers from "unreasonable discomfort."

"The justification that's cited most often is that the law creates jobs," said Oregon State University economist Patrick Emerson.

This week, the law went into effect that the state legislature passed last year, allowing gas stations in 15 rural counties with less than 40,000 residents to abandon the full-service model and let customers man the pumps themselves.

Station owners are under no obligation to ditch their attendants, nor are they required to let drivers pump their own gas. It's just an option.

in 2015 Oregon passed a law legalizing "sundown to sun-up" self-serve gas.

http://www.thedrive.com/news/17304/people-in-oregon-are-freaking-out-about-the-thought-of-pumping-their-own-gas-under-a-new-law
http://ktvl.com/news/local/new-law-oks-self-serve-at-rural-oregon-gas-stations-but-will-stations-make-the-change

For whatever reason, laws prohibit drivers from getting their own gas in New Jersey, possibly as a nanny state job protection racket, and penalties for touching pumps range between $50 and $250 for the first offense and up to $500 for subsequent offenses.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/31/people-freak-out-after-oregon-strikes-law-banning-self-service-gas-stations/
http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2012/02/why_cant_oregonians_pump_their.html

1 comment: