Red is the new yellow and yellow is the new green!
@asemaster
If the lights said the words in English, then non-English speakers wouldn’t understand. That’s discriminatory. With cryptic symbols they are able to confuse everybody, equally.
2 Likes
What? How does that work? 
CSA
Imagine this scenario- a rental car. You have people from all over the world flying in and renting cars. You expect them to navigate some type of menu system to find their language preference prior to taking off in the car- assuming the car has a video type screen to show all of these translations? It was left in Arabic and now you can’t even read the menus to know how to select English for example.
Symbol approach to universal language has been around for a long long time. Just look at street warning signs. The triangle with an exclamation point is pretty well recognized or the red circle with a line through it.
I’ve been exposed to manufacturing products that are used around the world. We had an entire group of people dedicated to translations. You’d be surprised at how some of the translations worked out and they were unclear to the user. In your example- low tire, that might not translate all that well depending on the language and region. For example, imagine if it translated to- tire is small. Yeah, so what!
Is it necessary to have your kids memorize each symbol, OR is it better to have them be aware that ONE of the symbols is lit and pull over to determine what to do.
… like the ones on the assembly instructions for Ikea furniture.
1 Like
Pictograms have bee used for drivers for decades? Why do you think a stop-sign is Red Octagon, Yield signs are Yellow Triangle.
Here’s a look at one possible future of the driving experience:
Sorry, I can’t stomach Ellen, but I managed to watch the overly contrived non-humorous clip created by her/his writers. I thought it was actually going to be illustrative of the future, but I just wasted my time.
CSA
I’ve been driving 44 years in a variety of cars. Recently the low tire symbol stayed on when I started the car one morning. One of those brain dead mornings, I couldn’t remember what THAT weird symbol means. But, aha, there is that ever so useful CAR MANUAL in the glove compartment! Mystery solved, I then checked pressure on all four tires, aired up the one which was low, stopped at the indie shop I patronize and from where I had bought the tires. Voila, tire had a screw in the tread. Tire repaired and I’m safer and with renewed knowledge about ALL the warning light symbols courtesy of a quick read in the manual.
Moral of the story, heed warning lights and, if necessary, look up in the car manual what they mean. 
EDIT: BTW, I check tire pressure, oil, fluid levels, etc. every week. And if there is major change in outside temperature or if when driving it feels different than normal, I check the tires. I’ve had TPS on my cars only the past twelve years. Old habits of keeping a regular check rather than relying only on the TPS although the sensors are a great feature I appreciate.
1 Like
The first time I experienced a low pressure warning light was in a 2002 Ford Windstar. Mrs. Triedaq, another colleague, and I were returning back to East Central Indiana from a conference in Minneapolis where we had given a presentation. The Windstar belonged to the university where we were employed. We left Minneapolis in the late afternoon and I was elected to drive the night shift. I was on I-74 in Illinois on a section of the interstate that was under construction. The pavement had been milled and there was only one lane in each direction. The milled pavement caused quite a vibration. At any rate, about midnight the tire pressure light popped on. There was no place to pull over and I couldn’t stop in traffic, so I had to keep going. I surmised from the shape of the symbol that it had something to do with.the tires. Both my wife and my colleague were asleep, and I didn’t detect any pull in the steering, so I just kept going and hoped for the best. I didn’t come to an exit until we were out of the construction zone. I pulled into a truck stop and looked at the tires. None appeared to be low on air. Mrs. Triedaq woke up and I told her why we had stopped. She got the manual out of the glove box and we found instructions on resetting the low pressure warning light. We reset the light and it stayed off. We did decide to go into the truck stop and have coffee. We didn’t get back into town until 3:00 a.m. and I didn’t get to bed until 4 a.m. I got up at 6:30 because I had to teach an 8:00 class. When I walked into my building, I found out my department head had died while we were out of town.
I did find out that the Ford Windstar we used didn’t have sensors in the tire valve stems, but used some system that was connected with the antilock brakes. The vibrations from the milled pavement had set off the low pressure warning light. I hope that type of low tire pressure monitoring system isn’t used anymore.
Overall, my 2014 Camry has proven far more reliable than the 2007 Impala but I confess I liked how the Impala would display the actual tire pressure for each tire whereas the Camry merely has an idiot light. It’s likely that a higher trim level of the Camry would have that nice feature but I didn’t spring for all the $$$$ bells and whistles.
Exactly. Adding nonsense for the 10 character limit.
1 Like
+1
Let us not forget that we get VERY frequent posts from people who can’t distinguish between warning lights for the following situations:
Low oil pressure
Low oil level
Time to change the oil
Rather than seizing on one age group’s ignorance regarding one particular warning light, I think it is time to remember that a significant percentage of drivers of ALL age groups have little–or no–clue regarding the meaning of any of the warnings that pop-up on their instrument panel.
Because all of that info can be found in one’s Owner’s Manual, I think that we need to file this thread under the topic of Willful Ignorance.
1 Like
But it is.
@PvtPublic I suppose the chances of the system setting off the low tire pressure symbol from uneven road surface such as milled pavement are small, but for me it was rather disconcerting. I have driven enough years and miles I can sense in the handling when a tire is low. However, I think the system with the sensors in the valve strms, though adding to the expense, is a good feature.
I own vehicles with both monitoring systems and I personally prefer the one run off the ABS wheel speed sensors. It’s simpler and has worked fine for me with never a false alarm (although, these are GM vehicles).
It does not indicate which tire is low, but with any tire alert, all tires should be checked and adjusted anyhow.
Problems with sensors in the tires are the expense of the ultimate replacement of each transmitter when the battery is depleted and many systems require resetting tire locations when tires are rotated. Additionally, many of these systems aren’t reset and give a driver a wrong low tire location.
I’m not looking for any extra complications and expenses. I think the system that utilizes the already installed and functioning ABS wheel speed sensor is genius.
CSA
Could it be that the driving public was actually better off when service stations actually had people that serviced customers cars when they filled up? You know, the ‘good ole days.’
1 Like
Per a blog post from Concordia University in 2018, “More than 30 million adults in the United States cannot read, write, or do basic math above a third-grade level.”
Beyond this, how well-written are the owner’s manuals that come with cars? My Vibe’s manual is terrible. Too many of my friends are published writers, and some of them write for corporations, I am the lowly English major. I’ve taken my car to a Toyota dealership to get some questions answered. Of course, I also posted questions in this forum for help. My most recent complaint with the manual is their instructions on replacing tail light bulbs; yes, the bulb #s are in the manual, but how to replacing all of them is tricky. I did it, but I can only hope all were replaced correctly. I’ll drive to a store with a glass facade to test them. The tire pressure symbol is explained in the manual, by the way.
Probably that. Also, in the ‘good ole days’ people were more self reliant. People tested their own tubes from their radios and TVs, ironed their own clothes, sewed buttons, darned socks, cooked and ate all their own meals, navigated their cars with a map. They kept records, wrote things down, paid attention. There wasn’t an “app for that (this, that, and the other thing)” and no reminder messages on the little phones people now walk around staring at and no messages jumping from a car dashboard.
People lived more within budgets bought cars they could afford (with lots of skin in the game) and wanted to take care of them so they’d last. Now folks charge an entire car purchase for cars that are too extravagant and expect it to be smart enough to manage itself. If maintenance is neglected they blame the manufacturer for selling a lemon or some cyber-space outfit that told them to drive into a lake through GPS technology.
CSA