Urban Myth
Posted: Mon 21 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 2 Comments »The BBC today is covering a story that the idea that turning on a mobile phone at a petrol filling station can cause an explosion is a myth. Supposedly, out of 243 petrol station fires attributed to mobiles around the world in the last 11 years, not one was caused by a handset.
The “true” cause? Static Electricity, supposedly.
I must admit, I’ve always been dubious about the entire “turn your mobile off at the filling station” idea. If the problem is that it causes some kind of spark or electrical action when on/being turned on, then to me the odds are that it’d do the same thing when you turned it off. After all, you’ve got to activate the thing (i.e. turn off the keypad lock etc.) before you can turn it off. I can understand that there’s a possibility, however remote, that taking/making a call in a filling station wouldn’t be smart, but that’s hardly Einstein material anyway.
I was told that the signal interfered with the way the pumps communicated with the till, naturally I laughed at the remedial counter assistant.
There is a show in America called “Mythbusters” that tested this. Same results that it wasn’t the phone, but was instead static electricity.