[sammyg2]

Spent my life working at places that makes gasoline, many millions of gallons a day.
I have three industrial fire fighting certificates hanging on the office wall.
One from Tejas A&M, the other two from Univ of Nevada Reno (1 fire fighting, 1 for instructing).
I've fought 8 significant oil refinery fires in my life, which is 9 too damn many.

it's darn near impossible to light gasoline with a cigarette. But that's not the danger here.
it's what the Einsteins use to light the cigarette.

Back when I was your age, we used matches to light cigarettes.
Often those matches ended up being tossed on the ground (oh the horror).
Gasoline vapors tend to stay low cause they're denser than air.
They specially like sewers. A lit match thrown at or near a sewer opening filled with gas vapors causes a big ole boom, which on a good vs. bad scale is way down at the bottom right next to BAD.

THAT is why it became 'agin the rules to smoke near gas pumps and it remains to this day.

And they've proven in several O'ficcial tests that cell phones ain't the problem.
Folks who climb into the ve-hickil to talk on cell phones and then climb back out and touch the nozzle without first grounding themselves to discharge the static charge is a much bigger problem.

If you leave the nozzle, when returning touch the gas pump frame before touching the nozzle.
its a simple habit to have but a good one.

Oh, and iffn you see a guy filling a plastic gas can while it's in the back of a pick-em-up, go ahead and get a head start so he doesn't catch you on fire when he runs past you.

Static sparks are really, really hot. A whole lot hotter than a cigarette. A whole lot hotter than some pissant spark from a cell phone.

That's why a static spark can light gasoline vapors relatively easily and why it's dangerous.