The true purpose of laws that ban self-serve filling stations has nothing to do with safety or “the common good.”
Monday, August 28, 2023
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For the first time since the Truman administration, Oregon drivers will be permitted to grab a fuel hose and fill their gas tanks all by themselves.
Governor Tina Kotek on Friday signed legislation, which went into effect immediately, that lifts the state’s 72-year ban on self-serve filling stations, leaving New Jersey as the last state in the US with a prohibition on self-serving gasoline stations.
Many Americans probably have no idea such bans still even existed, as ridiculous as they may be. Yet New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy says he has no intention of lifting the Garden State’s ban.
“On self service gas — it’s been sort of a political third rail in New Jersey, which I have historically not crossed,” Murphy recently told a local news station. “I’m not necessarily signing up for that because I need to understand the impact.”
It’s unclear what Murphy means by “understand the impact”—more on that in a minute—but it’s important to scrutinize the stated purpose of such laws.
New Jersey’s law, like Oregon’s, ostensibly stemmed from safety concerns. In 1949, the state passed the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act and Regulations, a law that was updated in 2016, which cited “fire hazards directly associated with dispensing fuel” as...
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