Everyone knows mobiles are not allowed in petrol stations, but…
Petrol stations everywhere are plastered with warnings about not using mobile phones on petrol station forecourts lest a caller inadvertently blow the place up. Yet has it ever actually been done? I don’t recall ever hearing of anyone actually having been seen starting a fire with a mobile phone.
Static electricity seems a much more dangerous thing, yet there are few if any signs saying beware static electricity, or of the need to electrically ground yourself:
Yet anyone who has put their phone next to their in car radio will have heard the interference, and this is a known issue in military circles where every effort is made to avoid Electromagnetic Interference which is generally reckoned to have caused the accidental firing of a missile on an aircraft carrier off Vietnam causing several deaths. Modern planes are subjected to every test manufacturers can think of. Closer to home, a car’s ignition coils are shielded to prevent interference with the car radio.
So I find myself wondering… is this phone thing an urban myth to stop people rebooting fuel pump computers so that they don’t have to pay for their petrol?
There was one program – probably Mythbusters – that showed it is impossible to blow up a petrol station with a mobile phone. Good old urban myths…
21 Jul 2008, 12:36
Mt Televisions
Mythbusters and Sky One TV show Brainiac tried to prove it worked but both failed. Think in the latter they showed man made fabrics building up a static charge are much more dangerous.
30 Jul 2008, 13:56
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