cbr125 forum

It turned out that the fuel company had implemented a new policy that motorcyclists cannot refill their bike while sitting on it, citing the fact that spilt petrol may be ignited by a hot engine.

Trevor was surprised by this. After all, as he pointed out, one wasn't much farther away from one's bike if one was standing beside it when filling it. Anyway, he said in true enthusiast fashion, if his pride and joy did go up in a ball of fire then he would want to go with it.

It's an interesting point. What is the danger of the bike exploding if the fuel ignites?

Well, firstly, it would most likely not be the fuel that exploded but the fuel vapour, and that would explode in a tremendously hot flash fire. In this event, if the rider has all skin covered and is wearing leathers, gloves etc and doesn't breath the flame in and sear his/her lungs, no real harm would be done. But it's likely the rider will not be wearing gloves and will have the helmet visor up, leaving skin to be severely burnt in the flash fire.

The second danger is that, if the rider is sitting on the bike, it is unlikely to be on a stand, either side stand or main stand. Thus, if the rider is sitting on the bike, he then cannot escape the fire without dropping the bike. And when the rider drops the bike trying to escape fuel will spill fuel all over the service station. This fuel will probably also ignite, causing a massive fire that will endanger the lives of many other people.

Even if the side stand is down to remove the danger of spilt fuel as the bike goes down, if the rider is sitting on the bike as he refuels it, the potential for injury to the rider is far greater as it will take longer for him to dismount and escape than if he was standing next to the machine.

The fuel company's rules apparently came about because such a fire occurred - a rider was badly burnt around the groin area when fuel overflowed from the tank and ignited while he was sitting on his bike refuelling it.

Responses to questions is normally directed through to the customer service group. In this case, I am also an avid rider with more than three decades of riding so I thought I would respond directly to this inquiry.

While the station attendant was correct in requesting that the rider dismount their motorcycle before fuelling, his explanation of the reason for this was not entirely complete.

The reasons for asking riders to get off their bikes:

This reduces the riders exposure to breathing gasoline vapors by increasing the distance from the fill point

This reduces the possibility of the riders skin and clothing being exposed to fuel splash and overflows if they occur

Should a refueling fire start, the rider's ability to quickly separate themselves from the fire is improved if they are already off the motorcycle

If a fire forced the rider to jump off the bike, the risk of the motorcycle falling over and spreading the fire is greatly reduced

As you can well imagine, Shell being a global company also operates in many countries where motorcycles are used as the primary mode of motorized transport. This allows us to review incidents all over the world and apply best practices developed in other countries that may have more experience in a particular area. In this case the policy came about as a result of investigations into multiple incidents that were compounded by the individual remaining on the motorcycle while fuelling. In most cases the damages were relatively minor and related to fuel spills and tank overfills resulting in the customer who was straddling the motorcycle being splashed with gasoline. In more severe cases the fuel splash has reached hot engine parts resulting in fires and in a tragic case, the resulting fires caused fatalities when the rider jumped of the bike knocking it over with it's still open fuel tank and the resulting fuel splash exposed the rider, as well as other individuals in the vicinity with burning gasoline.


There is currently no provincial, state or national regulation requiring riders to dismount prior to fuelling, but Shell believes it is our corporate responsibility to ensure that we create as safe an environment as possible at our stations. We have not widely communicated to the motorcycling community our global policy, partially because we are not aware of any other major oil company adopting a similar policy. We do not wish to create the mistaken impression that Shell is not motorcycle friendly because of this policy. Our motorcycling community is still relatively small, so we have tried to manage this policy by asking station staff to reinforce this policy with customers in a respectful manner. We do have a pamphlet available at all our locations called "Shell Helps with Gasoline Safety" that does mention this subject.

I hope you find this explanation adequate and that you consider how Shell is doing this to improve rider safety when you make your choice of fuel supplier. I do understand the difficulties in topping up a fuel tank while the bike is on the side stand, but from a technical standpoint the tank should not be filled beyond 95% capacity to allow for expansion and the design of a modern Harley fuel tank is such that this limit should be able to be reached even when the motorcycle is on the side stand. The center stand is also an alternative.