I’ll have to try to remember to look that out. I’ve loved Bob Newhart ever since discovering my dad’s copy of
as a wee nipper.
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Simply fun to watch. Great cast.
One of the first movies about computer crime!
The computer stuff itself was more ore less bollocks even then, but the social engineering is spot on.
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I’ll just stop for a minor rant here about all the drivers who queue up at pumps when there are emply spaces the other side. Like they’ve never figured out the pump pipe will actually reach round the back of the car and it only takes a smidgeon of common sense to stop the car in a suitable place to enable this.
It doesn’t matter which side you stop on. This lady knew that much at least (well, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on that point, anyway).
Deffo staged.
Even more of a game changer than rapid charging will be hands-off charging. Either contactless or with a robotic arm, I don’t know or care. But when it comes, then restaurants, hotels, and parking garages will be scrambling to install it, and soon people will forget that you need to charge as most of the time, it’s done for you.
I do not expect the cars to do the hookup themselves, but instead wait docilely until the “stable hand” (which is what I am now calling this) attempts a hookup, then all it does is grant permission. Decoupling is also automatic, especially since the parking space owner doesn’t want the expensive stable hand damaged if a driver decides to force the issue.
All of this to say that the woman in this video will be replaced by the person whose car refused to start because the owner forgot that not all places have auto-recharge.
And I too subscribe to the idea that she was most likely trying to top off a rental before returning it, like we have all gotten into the habit of. A sort of muscle memory, you could say.
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Ahem.
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This isn’t a phone! where is the camera? there isn’t even a screen.
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I couldn’t find the hood release in my new CRV for 3 months. I had to google it. The lever to open the gas tank door is where you’d expect a hood release; under the dash on the lower left, so I didn’t notice an “empty” space. Turns out the hood release IS down there, but on the side instead of in front.
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He started with dogs and worked his way up.
Have you tried not parking at the gas pumps? At least every gas station I’ve ever seen has some if not plenty of parking for people who go inside the store.
In fact, round these parts, it’s considered rude to leave your car at the gas pump when you go into the store for any reason…
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That’s how they getcha! We will be happy to let you leave when you pay the undisclosed resort fees (which now include free charging).
Some drivers don’t want the inevitable scratches that happen when the hose rubs against the paint on the way to the other side of the car.
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That’s just the sort of situation I expect some place to try. But knowing people, they will decouple forcefully, resulting either damage to the car or to the stablehand. And of course lawsuits, and states making laws and such.
Maybe so, I guess.
I typically let it fall on or under the rear bumper. Never noticed any scratches from the rubber pipes. Perhaps, the trick is to pull it out away from the car and not use the car as a lever against which to pull it towards the filling hole. The car does need to be stopped so the rear is past where the pump is hanging.
I’ve seen saloon drivers drag it across the boot (trunk) and thought ‘why not just pull forward a few feet to start with?’ but I guess in those cases they didn’t care about the paintwork.
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Ah, there’s the difference. Most of the pump hoses around here have overhead tethers and lift the hose off the ground. If your car is more than ~ 1 M tall, the untethered section of hose is going to drag across your paint no matter what you do.
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Ah, I see.
Over here they nearly always come from a foot or three off the ground. Can’t recall the last time I saw an overhead one in the UK.
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At the gas stations that I have experienced, about half to three fourths have very short hoses that don’t reach the other side, and the other quarter has hoses that can easily reach either side. But traffic through the islands is in both directions, so the people can easily drive around the island and come in from the other side.
It seems like most American cars have gas fuel doors on the left (driver’s) side of the vehicle, but it is not standardized, and with imports it’s probably about a 60/40 split or so, so the right-handed pumps tend to be a bit less busy.
It is a bad system and I wish that the longer hoses would be more prevalent. Even with big signs directing traffic in one direction and telling people that they have hoses that will fit to both sides of the vehicle, people still don’t believe them…
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That’s a beautiful pump!
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
The attachment point at the top of the pump is a retractable cable, so even if you think you’ve cleared the top of your car, that’s the exact moment the cable starts to release and the hose plops onto your roof/trunk…
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And then there’s this, which is another, lateral-thinking way of solving the problem:
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