this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
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You absolutely can.
Should you? That's another question.
Well I've never seen a gas station blow up, so it must be fine
I know you are joking but I can’t sleep so I will share.
I have seen two huge gasoline explosions and the aftermath of a gas pump explosion.
One was from a cigarette. I didn’t actually see that, but I was sitting in social studies class when the shockwave hit us. It felt like the ceiling pressed down on us. It blew out all the pane glass windows in downtown. This was in the early’80s. Someone who was cleaning a gasoline barge lit a cigarette out of habit. It was like a fuel air bomb going off.
I was a little kid in the early ‘70s when a gasoline truck driver accidentally set his truck on fire by the static from his nylon jacket. It was at night and the explosion woke me up. You could see the fire from everywhere in town.
In the late ‘70s these three dumbasses were stealing gasoline from the filling station where they worked. They were filling 55 gallon drums in a van. It was dark so one of these genuses lit his lighter.
The burned out van was still there in the middle town in the morning. Everyone in the small town drove by to look.
Every annoying safety rule has multiple stories like this behind them.
Smoking a cigarette won't cause a fire at a gas station.
Lighting a cigarette, on the other hand, can absolutely cause one.
Yep a cigarette cherry is not hot enough to ignite gasoline.
Which is how the human race survived for a long time, I very much remember smoking at gas pumps being a norm in the 80s.
No, it definitely is. It's just that gasoline is relatively hard to ignite and the right air/fuel mixture won't reach the hotter part of the ember.
It's hard to cause a large gas explosion by carrying a flame. Gas tends to diffuse, so you get small explosions that dissipate the problem before you reach the large concentrations.
That said, "hard" does not mean "impossible". History is full of counterexamples. But it is much easier to make trouble by igniting the flame after you are inside.
The now-predictive documentary "Robocop" would suggest otherwise
I stand corrected!
I've read that the most fires at gas stations (related to refueling) happen when somebody enters the car while fueling. I don't know if it's true, but it has a point.
The potential static electricity from getting into the seat and the dilution of the gas in the air at that position is a more ignitable combination than holding a lit cigarette right at the nozzle. The draft from opening the door will make different dilutions, so it's pretty sure that it is ignitable at some point around that position.
The risk of explosion is quite low at the pump. It's actually worse if they step away to smoke, because depending on wind there will be a position somewhere in the vicinity of the pump where the gas is easier to ignite. Firing up a lighter there could be bad.
Anyway. There's plenty of other good reasons not to smoke at a gas station.
The static electricity thing checks out: https://youtu.be/T6VKxmUPb3g
A cigarette does not cause any fire, or only in very rare circumstances. The open flame of the lighter or matches is the big issue: https://youtu.be/t9CC-dGwku8
If you're pumping diesel unless there's something to whick it can get that trucker life
Might turn into a once in a lifetime experience for you and the people closest to you
I remember the time at the gas docks a guy was smoking and when told to put it out he said “this is diesel, it doesn’t do that, look” and then put his cigarette out by pumping diesel onto it.
Then he got a ticket by the very unamused DNR cop who was also fueling up his boat, who was the one who initially told him to put his cigarette out.