was filling up v early this morning and was wondering why the latches on all the UK pumps are disabled? Whenever i've filled up in America you can just click the latch and it locks it open.

Not normally a problem,but i had the worlds slowest pump this morning, i'm sure someone must have been in there winding it by hand and i always start wondering this as the weather gets colder and my hands start freezing when i'm filling up! Now if only i could click the latch thing and just stand there with my hads in my pockets. I could just MTFU up though, but still curious as to why we arent trusted to have the latch things here.

I'd imagine it's some sort of Health & Safety law. Those catches can fail, we have a big 30,000l tank here at the quarry for filling mobile plant up. You want to see the mess you get when the catch fails, the operator isn't looking and 200+ litres of red ends up on the floor…….

gloves?? Now thats far too organised 😆

and where have all the pumps that take cards gone? I hate buying petrol in a busy station and queuing for ages behind all those people that seem to have done the weekly grocery shop, or worse still, queuing to get to a pump cos all the others have been taken up by people filling up then doing the shop.

Never seen one with a working latch in my life, must be a UK law thing.

Just about every one around me has a card option vinnyeh

For every person that whizzes through using their card at the pump, there's an old codger who stands there for five minutes waiting for it to start while the assistant is hollering at him over the tannoy to press some button or other.

I'm not sure if it might be the reason the UK ones are disabled but……

While people wander around while the car is filling they can build up a bit of static, so in the same way that you get can a bit of a jolt as you grab the car door, they get a little static spark as they grab the pump handle. I've seen US cctv footage of this igniting the vapour from the fuel tank

boooph