Outside of countries like Brazil and South Africa, gas station attendants are especially rare. It's more common to simply fill your own car up with gas, an activity that doesn't always end well but is commonplace throughout most of the US. Drivers in New Jersey still rely on attendants and, back in 2018, a new law in Oregon was introduced to allow drivers to pump their own gas, although this only applied to counties with 40,000 or fewer residents. Now, all Oregonians will temporarily be allowed to pump their own gas and it's due to a crazy heatwave in the region.

According to Autoblog, the temporary suspension was enforced by the Office of State Fire Marshall and was presumably to prevent gas station attendants from having to stand in the heat for several hours per day. On Sunday, the temperature hit around 112 degrees in Portland, far above the average temperature in the city for this time of year. Besides the heat, perhaps the biggest obstacle for many Oregon residents will be figuring out how to actually pump their own gas. When the law changed in 2018, many residents said that they didn't know how to go about transferring gas from a pump into their cars, a fact that remains hard to digest.

A notice posted at a gas station in Oregon indicates that the self-service arrangement will run through June 29. Amusingly, the same notice had a list of instructions for how to go about the arduous task, including point number 5 which reminds drivers to hang up the nozzle when they've filled up their vehicles.

Perhaps this all explains why the Honda Clarity Electric was once only offered in the states of California and Oregon, because customers in the latter simply can't be bothered to pump their own gas. Hopefully, there are no owners of a Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport or Lamborghini Aventador in the area; with these cars only managing around 10 mpg, visits to the pumps will be a regular occurrence. Portland is expected to see more scorching days ahead.