The gas prices have jumped immensely from where they were a year ago, in Western New York and in most of the country, too. While you may have taken notice of the rise in gas prices, you may have missed this other recent change at the gas pump.

Now, it should be said that this has not affected every gas station yet in Western New York, though it is definitely making waves. 

Normally, when it’s cold out or you simply don’t want to stand and pump your gas by hand, plenty of drivers will use the hold-open lever on the gas pump to auto-lock the handle and keep gas pumping into the car without having to hold the lever. 

However, these auto-locks on the gas pump were removed years ago in Western New York, which was very unfortunate, especially with our extensive winters.

But here’s some good news! It looks like the auto-locks might be coming back.

We’ve received a few messages from people on our Facebook page, informing us that the Enser’s Express in Hamburg has, what appears to be, newer handles with plastic auto-locks attached to allow the gas to pump on its own. 

Hopefully this becomes a widespread change in Western New York, though nothing has yet been confirmed. 

You can’t help but wonder why they were removed in the first place all those years ago. 

Why Did They Remove The Auto-Locks From The Pumps?

During the Great Recession of 2008, the auto-locks on the gas pumps were said to be removed to prevent people from driving away with the hose still in the car. The removal of the auto-locks required people to stand outside their cars and manually pump the gas by hand, so drivers would know when to remove the hose from the car.

You can read more about what happened to the auto-locks here.

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