I can't think of any downsides, besides the increased construction cost (not really sure how much increase, considering the ground space required is less, and no digging, but designing hanging fuel tanks, maybe about 1-2 tons of fuel would be hard) and limit on the capacity stored. Why were they discontinued? Was the disaster risk any higher. My initial guess it that any body driving and smashing the pumps is not present anymore, they are built high enough to not be hit by trucks.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If one of those catches fire, say from a spark, it's going to be dumping burning gas all over everyone nearby. They obviously retract out of the way when not in use, and if the hose you're holding suddenly turns into a flamethrower, your first instinct is going to be to let go of it.

[–] sga@lemmings.world 4 points 2 days ago

that seems to be a solvable problem, you can add pretty good fail proof (read resistant) valves. And the retraction can be controlled to never let any fuel come back, so even if the hoses catch fire, they would pretty quickly dry out. Combined with good sensors, these could outperform modern stuff in theory. (or atleast I believe so)