You pull up to a gas station in
a rental car. It's raining outside - a raw, gray, November day. Maybe you don't
feel like getting out and getting wet. Maybe you'd rather not stick your head
out the window and twist your neck like some strange waterfowl, hoping to spot
that morsel of a gas cap on the driver's side.
Yes, you're going to have to get
out of this strange automobile at some point. After all, this so-called
"convenience mart" looks more like the Bates Motel than a full-service gas
station. But do you really need to circle the rental car, cursing its maker
for putting the gas cap on the passenger's side while rain runs through your
shoes?
There's a Way to Figure This Out
Last week, my sister-in-law sent
me a message with a catchy title: "Fw: There's finally a way to figure this out".
Because I've recently learned how to tie my own shoes, I thought it might be
time to learn something new. According to the e-mail's original sender, my car's
instrument panel can tell me which side my gas cap is on. Such knowledge isn't
something I struggle with on a daily basis, but I have stood in
puddles on raw, gray November days while pumping gas into rental cars.
"If your look at your gas
gauge," my sister-in-law's email explained, "you will see a small icon of a gas
pump." I was with it so far. "The handle of the gas pump will extend out on
either the left or right side of the gas pump". Sure enough. "If your tank is
on the left, the handle will be on the left. If your tank is on the right, the handle
will be on the right (see photo). It is that simple!"
Obscure References and Popular Ethics
So is it really that simple? Naturally,
I felt compelled to do my own research. On a day when I've Googled terms such as "what
do cranes eat", I queried "which side is the gas cap on". The best result, a
page from Ask MetaFilter, attempted to answer that very question. According to a gentleman
named ObscureReferenceMan, Click and Clack of Car Talk fame claim that "more
than 95% of US cars have the gas cap opposite the muffler".
A knowledgeable sort named
Popular Ethics then chimed in. "If I recall," this sibling of Popular
Mechanics explained, "the only standard was that the gas cap is always on the
opposite side of the car as the exhaust pipe, presumably for safety (standards?)
reasons." Popular Ethics also noted, much as my sister-in-law's email had
done, that "most cars these days have a little gas arrow under the fuel gauge
which points to the side with the cap".
What do you think, CR4ers? Does
a car's gas gauge always tell you which side the gas cap is on?
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