Petrol Station Forecourts and Mobile Phones

[Bibs]

I spend weekends at a racetrack with the intention of running towards cars on fire Roger, we all make our own decisions and one of the reasons I started marshalling in the first place was to add some excitement and danger to my weekends.

You've heard of base-jumping, right? Those guys are so keyed up on safety I bet they've got a fire extinguisher in their kitchen but outside of the cotton wool world everyone seems to want to live in nowadays some people enjoy a little risk from time to time. Walking down the street carries a much higher risk that 1,000,000,000 to 1 but I bet you do it. In fact, I recall stories of you driving so hard on public roads you try to go faster around corners using trail braking, normal braking isn't fast enough. Is that less risky than a billion to 1 chance of an accident happening? You still do it but you'll not use a mobile phone in a garage or on a plane where there are NO REPORTED INCIDENTS of it causing a problem. People crash cars from driving too fast all day every day.

I'm not saying everyone should make phone calls from forecourts or call people during take-off, I just don't like being told what to do when there's no good reason.

[Rich H]

I have no issue with restrictions on phones in places if there is due cause.

As you say it's hardly inconvinient not to use your phone for a few mins and a nice quiet plane gets my vote!

But if there is no basis for the restriction on forecourts then why have them?

(I used to travel a lot by train and the best trip ever was in a carriage where the lights had blown, the carriage was 3/4 full of peole enjoying the peace adn quet!)

My problem is rules imposed then not reviewed as it's easier not to.

Highway Code stopping distances - based on an Austin Seven? Speed limits imposed in the 60's? Shop Opening hours spefied at the dawn of time?

Restrictions are placed on all sorts of things then not reviewed as it's less effort.

[lrg_machine]

I'm not saying everyone should make phone calls from forecourts or call people during take-off, I just don't like being told what to do when there's no good reason.

As I said previously, if you can use your mobile then so can everyone else.

if there's roughly 300,000 people in the sky at any one time and just half of those decide to use their phone your 1:1000000000 chance of something happening has just been cut so dramatically that it's harder to win the lottery, and someone does win that most weeks.

Plus I don't want to be sat on a 10 hour flight with someone next to me prattling away, or mobiles ringing, it's bad enough on trains.

[Bibs]

That was Roger's billion to 1, my number was much larger.

Are we getting to the point though, you'd rather people didn't use phones for your personal comfort? I'm with you, I find half of another persons conversation annoying but if I asked them to be quiet it would be to save me the agony rather than some bull about it bringing the plane down.

[lrg_machine]

No I think personal comfort is just a pleasant side effect.

No phones = Zero risk

Lot's of phones = risk increased

and when your talking about a metal tube 40,000 ft in the air filled with people zero risk has to be the answer as it's a risk that is totally avoidable.

[Bibs]

Again, that's the point. The risk isn't increased, there's no evidence of it.

No phones = Zero risk

Lots of phones = Zero risk

[redshift]

I always turned mine off as I know they can affect electronics.

You're getting closer to the truth now Trevor.

There were issues many years back with people operating CB radios and the petrol pumps did strange things and the net result was cheap petrol.

I have many years experience of EMC design and testing and I remember it quite clearly. A garage is not likely to say 'dont use RF devices on the forecourt or you may get cheap petrol' are they??

Of course today the pumps electronics are EMC tested and probably shouldn't be affected but if you held the phone in just the right place, then who knows.

[oneshot]

No I think personal comfort is just a pleasant side effect.

No phones = Zero risk

Lot's of phones = risk increased

and when your talking about a metal tube 40,000 ft in the air filled with people zero risk has to be the answer as it's a risk that is totally avoidable.

Hmm

There are a lot more significant risks associated with flying than the possibility (unproven) of a phone affecting flight. Quantas A380 to Sydney anyone??

[lrg_machine]

Sorry Dave that was a manufacturing / mechanical etc. failure, completely different as that sort of thing can happen anywhere at any time on anything

Bibs

It's a proven fact that RF transmitters (mobiles, radio controlled cars and so on) will affect improperly shielded electronics or electronics with damaged shielding, so there IS a risk.

[Bibs]

Planes are subject to >300,000 amp lightning strikes which don't really cause significant problems as the aircraft so well shielded and are fitted with wicks, I'll eat my hat if a phone brings down a plane.

[redshift]

Just to enlarge on the avionics aspects. Documented cases include:

- Autopilot disconnects on 737NG aircraft

- Nav display mode switching on 737NG

- Hold smoke/fire detectors triggered.

To name a few.

Where the first two could come under 'inconvient' the third may result in aircraft being emergency landed in less than optimum conditions.

On a lighter note there was the F/O who had a Ground Prox Warning System alert as the 'incoming SMS' tone on his phone. Yes, he left it switched on one flight and many miles out at many thousand feet the captain was rather startled to hear a "Whoop, whoop, whoop, pull up, pull up".

[cazna52]

Planes are subject to >300,000 amp lightning strikes which don't really cause significant problems as the aircraft so well shielded and are fitted with wicks, I'll eat my hat if a phone brings down a plane.

Just to introduce a bit more science back in to the discussion I will explain why the effects of a lightning strike and the effects of a mobile phone would be different.

In the case of a lightning strike the reason that the passengers are not killed and for the most part electronics are not fried is because the body of the plane acts as a Faraday Cage. Because electricity is inclined to follow the path of least resistance when a plane is struck by lightning the charge enters the body of the plane, is transmitted through the body around the outside of the cabin, then exits the planes body from below to continue its trip to earth. In most cases this will not cause any significant damage to the aircraft.

Mobile phones are different because they are inside the cabin of the plane. Also the frequencies of interference are different.

By the way though, lightning strikes do occasionally cause damage to aircraft. It is a fairly low risk though and although most aviation authorities mandate a 20 mile exclusion zone around known electrical storms it is far more convenient to fly straight through them. Why inconvenience yourself when the risk is so low?

[The Veg]

As a semi-interesting aside, a few weeks ago I had a flight on a Boeing 777 and I recall an announcement shortly before leaving the terminal in which a flight attendant told us that the airplane's computer had detected six mobile devices in use and that said computer would not allow the engines to be started until all the devices were turned off. The cabin crew quickly found all six users and kindly asked them to turn off the devices...and I was really surprised that none of the six users threw a fit if indignation. We were underway very shortly.

[Iconic Ride]

Sh*t, Ben! You weren't supposed to tell anyone about "the computer." Now I have to track you down and kill you. Damn! I had other plans for the weekend.

[USAndretti42]

Just to enlarge on the avionics aspects. Documented cases include:

- Hold smoke/fire detectors triggered.

To name a few.

I'm surprised a phone set one of those off. I wouldn't have thought they would be sensitive to electronic disturbance. And isn't the hold in a separate Faraday cage from the passenger space?

[redshift]

The phone in the last example was actually in a checked in bag, that why the hold alarms triggered.

One reason why there is so little ratified evidence is that each different type of cellphone system has totally different EMC properties. GSM, CDMA, 3G etc would all give completely different results. Also where there is an EMC problem it is highly dependent on frequency, ie it is a resonant point. You may get a problem with a 900MHz GSM, a glitch with a 880MHz GSM and zippo with a 2GHz 3G.

More problems were found in the early days of cellphones with 450MHz AMPS, and early GSM. The new systems on much higher frequencies are generally lower power and lower risk.

As Bibs said, a cellphone is not going to bring an airliner down. Each part of an avionics system is rated according to how critical its function is. The more critical the application the higher the level of the tests required for certification. Thats why most confirmed cases are limited to peripheral sensors rather that actual control functions.

However, that last example of a smoke/fire detector being triggered could have caused the crew to make decisions that could have increased the risk, especially if there were other issues at the time. Just one 'hole in the cheese'. And as John will confirm, when all the holes in the cheese line up then the outcome can be tragic.

[Iconic Ride]

Indeed. It's rarely a single failure or "glitch" that causes a fatal aircraft accident, almost always a "chain of events," where breaking the chain at any point would have generally led to a different outcome.

Not that it has anything to do with phones, but years ago an Eastern Airlines Lockheed L1011 Tristar flew into a Florida swamp at night as the crew was attempting to diagnose a faulty "landing gear down" light indication. The point being, if a phone were to cause an anomaly (distraction), the potential for fixating on the problem exists, when attention might be better aimed at other airbourne factors (the Tristar was at a fairly low altitude when the indication problem arose). If the ILS instrument approach example I cited earlier had induced the crew to unwittingly fly into terrain (again, not so likely now, as the Eastern accident was one of several events that led to more sophisticated terrain warning devices being installed on more modern airliners), you can be certain that rules about phone usage in flight would be more seriously enforced. Hopefully, the current crop of phones, with their reduced power requirements, has effectively eliminated the problem altoghether, but I'm not an EMC guru.

[rogerch]

I arrived Thursday morning at the operating suite, a brand new very sophisticated piece of gear, I was the 3rd person across the table since it's installation.

I was greeted by a sign asking to turn off my mobile phone, Although the phone, along with my clothing and personal affects would not be entering the operating suite itself, I obliged without question. what did I have to loose?

The friend who tried to call me to wish me luck, she left me a text message instead.

[Loose Cannon]

The local (female) petrol station attendants are always blaring mobile phone warnings at people, however they did nothing to the 2 numpties who whipped out one of those portable battery boosters to jump their car!

PS is there not a chance of a larger spark when the metal pump nozzle strikes the filler neck?

[Iconic Ride]

One would hope that the metalurgy folks anticipated that potential, and designed "non-sparking" alloys (coatings?) suitable for nozzles and necks. Non?

[andydclements]

The local (female) petrol station attendants are always blaring mobile phone warnings at people, however they did nothing to the 2 numpties who whipped out one of those portable battery boosters to jump their car!

PS is there not a chance of a larger spark when the metal pump nozzle strikes the filler neck?

The filler nozzles are an aluminium alloy AFAIK, so nor really a potential for sparking, even if they hit the floor.

Back in the days when I ran a petrol station we had an AA van come on to do the booster pack job, he didn't like getting told to remove his van and the car and do it away from the pump and vent area.

Also had a person using mobile who claimed to be one of our suppliers and on the call to one of our staff after I asked him to cease using the mobile, that was quite funny because I then pointed out that meant he was working so covered by HASAW so it became a criminal offence.

[USAndretti42]

Filled up at 76 petrol station the other day. No cellphone warnings to be seen but each pump did have a warning about static electricity and earthing yourself to your car.

[comem47]

Back to the airplane cell phone thing I recently saw an old Mythbusters show on the subject. Their first test mock-up was in something like an open Cessa shell with poor shielding (when you see the needle moving) Later in a real business class jet they couldn't get any reading at all on any instrument, despite amplification.. The conclusion is better safe than sorry in case the cell phone technology continues to evolve they don't wish to keep evaluating the safety of new units as a never ending task. Their testing had to be done on the ground because it is US federal law you can't use them in the air. Here is a brief synopsis video:

http://www.yourdiscovery.com/video/mythbusters-top-10-mobile-phones-on-a-plane

When it comes to gas stations the bottom line is ground yourself first before fueling (you can grab the metal on the key and let the tip arc back to the car frame to avoid taking the pain of the shock yourself and don't re-enter the vehicle as she did (thus getting another charge)

Edited December 17, 2010 by comem47

[Iconic Ride]

Bill before the United States House of Representatives:

Proposed bill before the House: a motion is made to ban the wearing of mohair sweaters while refueling private vehicles. Though the odds of inadvertant conflagration are estimated to be a mere one in several million, the needs of the public welfare take priority, and the goal of attaining a 100% perfectly safe world through legislated behavioral modification is of utmost importance. Recommendation is made to establish a sweater patrol armed militia at each U.S. filling station, with authority to shoot on sight any and all patrons seen to be attempting refueling of their vehicle while wearing a mohair sweater.

Proposal submitted this17th day of December, 2010.

Motion forwarded to the No Mo Hair committee, 15:17 E

[comem47]

Ah but the generation of static on vehicles (particularly in winter) has little to do with mohair in particular. I get it all the time.

If you mean it's poor dress code, well that's a personal choice.