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Monday, January 23, 2017

Don't you just hate it when somebody could have killed you?



National news has been so overwhelming the past couple of weeks it's been difficult to pick out a single subject to write about. Then the other day something happened that was more down to earth and personal, a minor observation at a gas station where one man's inconsideration and unsafe actions could have killed us all.

In working on boats I quickly learned the safety precautions necessary when fueling, having read about several and seen one boat blow up from lack of such care.

So, I followed a guy into a gas station the other day and where people are asked to pull ahead to the open pump, this guy stopped at the first one and I had to maneuver around him with a trailer to get to the one in front of him. That was the inconsiderate act.

But that was just impolite, the next two were far more dangerous. First, he put the nozzle into the filler pipe on his car, set the switch to full and walked away, went into the attached store for something leaving the pump unattended. This is the first safety no-no. Even with automatic shutoffs and splash guards, so much can go wrong no one should ever leave gas flowing without someone watching.

Then he came back from the store and without even looking at the operation opened the door and sat inside the car waiting for the pump to shut off. When it did, he got out of the car and pulled the nozzle out of the filler hole. Then he tapped the metal nozzle on the metal filler pipe several times to shake out any excess gasoline that might have spilled on his car. Does anyone know what can happen when you strike metal against metal?


If you can't guess, I will tell you: SPARKS! All it would have taken was one little spark caused by that tapping and the car and possibly the whole place could have gone up. In that situation there is also the danger of static electricity buildup creating the spark that leads to fire as in the attached video. It has happened before and probably will again.





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