Saturday 12 January 2013

Why The Tire Pressure Light Is The Most Useless Warning Light

image credit: BrentDPayne cc

Warning lights have never been the most helpful thing in the world. They're there to tell you when something's about to go wrong, but without giving you a good estimate on how severe or how soon things are going to get really screwed up.

A warning light just tells you to be a little more on edge. But the most useless of all is the one for the tire pressure monitoring system, given the rather unfortunate abbreviation of TPMS.

4 comment(s):

Anonymous said...

Very strange. This is the only warning light that I have found useful. Tires tend to lose pressure slowly, so when this light comes on I know it is time to get the tire pressure back up to where it is.

Dave said...

I agree. Two months after I bought my new car, I drove 2400 miles to Joshua Tree & back. Several days after getting back home, the TPMS light came on. 20 pounds in my F/R tire. I carry a pump, and found out it wouldn't attach due to the stupid hubcaps. It's come on twice since then, due to drops in temperature. And the tires don't actually look low enough to need air. Quite handy, if you ask me.

orbitup said...

I wholesale cars and this light is the biggest PITA that I have to deal with.

Anonymous said...

I think it is a very good light...the article is what is useless.
So what if it doesn't tell you which tire is low? It's better than not knowing anything.
How does it work, you might wonder? A tire with low pressure will have a smaller effective radius, making it have to spin faster than the other ones...and the ABS braking system can sense this,