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Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

Oh you.

In all seriousness, charging a car is far safer than filling it with gas; no attendants needed!

* so long as you believe the premise of the law

The first time I filled up in Oregon after moving into the state, the attendant pulled the nozzle out of my truck while it was still filling up. Gas all over my truck and the ground. The manager came up and apologized, saying it was his first day on the job. The kid was probably still in high school, and the first day he ever had to fill a car up.

And there I was sitting in my truck realizing I had about over 25 years "job" experience for what this kid was doing, and I had never done that.

I hear these stories all the time from people, and don’t doubt this happened to you but I have lived in Oregon almost my whole life and this has never happened to me or anyone I personally know.

Of course it would never happen to you. You grew up in OR, so you never tried to pump your own gas. That situation only happens to people from out of state who come to OR and start pumping their own gas, not knowing the law against it.

Yeah its a bit ironic. I remember being a young kid and my dad showing me how to pump gas. I assume that's normal for everyone outside Oregon and (New Jersey?). It's funny that such a common thing is somehow a rare piece of knowledge in some places. Reminds me of the story of Newton (or some other deep thinking mathematician) going somewhere and realizing he didn't know how to butter toast.

Edit: I looked it up, the toast story is Erdős

http://www.fang.ece.ufl.edu/erdos.html

The premise of the law is a jobs program, is it not?

No one could reasonably look at the other 48.5 states and conclude that self-service fueling is dangerous. They could reasonably say “we want to structure fueling to protect bullshit jobs.”

I think if you look at insurance costs, you could find the answer to whether or not self-service fueling is more dangerous or not.

Or you could answer whether insurance is rent seeking that's parasitic on society. I don't know the details so could be wrong, but if insurance is mandated by government and supplied by an oligopoly, it's fees don't necessarily reflect the actual risk involved. It's easy to see comparisons of different health/car insurance costs across jurisdictions to see that.

Well, yes, I think if that's how you feel about insurance and the supposed lack of a functioning free market, you have to resolve that question first before using it as an indication of actual risk.

The premise of the law is safety, or at least it was when it was enacted generations ago. It’s function is as a jobs program though.

It’s a valid question — I was wondering the same.

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