4 ms·

Yeah that's terrible advice. Learning to ignore safety warnings is an amazing way to wind up stranded or with a destroyed car because you decided to ignore a wa

• potato3732842 11mo ago
  The first 100yr of automobiles didn't have TPMS and it was mostly fine.
  • pixl97 11mo ago
    I mean if you consider that death rate per mile driven 'mostly fine'
    • SoftTalker 11mo ago
      Check your tire pressures when you get gas, along with your oil and other fluid levels. Eyeball the tires every time you get in the car. These habits are not hard to develop and they will work even when the sensors malfunction (which is not infrequently). All that these sensor-based systems do is train you to be an inattentive car owner.
      • mindslight 11mo ago
        Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal. Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that. The problem isn't the dash warning lights of the past several decades, it's the built in corporate surveillance hardware of the past single decade (and the corresponding violation of user trust in favor of corporate control).
        • everdrive 11mo ago
          >Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that. A lot of modern automation is not really automation. A washing machine is automation: it takes a task which would have wasted hours of your day and reduces it down to a few minutes. A lot of modern "automation" doesn't save you any actual time time, but just saves you from being attentive: - Checking your tire pressure doesn't take much time, but TPMS is a privacy problem and an added maintenance cost that you cannot opt out of. - A power rear lift gate actually takes _more_ time than just shutting it with your hands. - Power windows don't go down any more quickly than power windows. The only only benefit here is that you can open all 4 windows simultaneously. However this is a luxury, not something which saves you time. You never _need_ all 4 windows down. So maybe people like it, but it's not like the washing machine that actually saves you labor. - etc .... People think that needed to do or attend to anything is wasting time, but often modern automation saves no time whatsoever, and has other downsides. (privacy, maintenance cost, vehicle weight, etc.)
          • mindslight 11mo ago
            It takes real time to get out a pressure gauge and check the pressure on each wheel, no? Furthermore, attention itself is a limited resource. For example, power windows were always handy when getting on/off the highway and coming up to a toll booth where I'd have to give/take a ticket. It's much easier to hold a button (or even have a latching button) while spending my attention on actually driving. I have one car with TPMS that's entirely done through the ABS controller measuring the relative diameters of the wheels. That's not a privacy or cost problem. Furthermore the privacy problem where wireless TPMS sensors are interrogatable is better framed as a security vulnerability in their design, rather than something intrinsic. Weight is a red herring as I'd guess the fuel savings from having properly inflated tires outweighs the fuel spent on the extra mass.
          • baubino 11mo ago
            As someone who grew up in the pre-power-window 1970s and 80s, they absolutely do save time. You have to remember that manual crank windows went along with a lack of air conditioning. Being able to quickly roll down the windows (especially all four at once) in a hot car mattered.
      • ponector 11mo ago
        Many modern cars have no way to manually check oil or any fluid levels. Only way is to check the reading from the sensor via main screen.
        • toast0 11mo ago
          Plenty of cars don't have a transmission dipstick. But do cars really not have oil dipsticks anymore? Other than EVs ;p Sealed radiators? No way to look for winshield washer fluid? No translucent reservoir of brake fluid?
          • ponector 11mo ago
            Right! There is only a cap to refill. Computer will tell you when you are low on windshield fluid. Or low on oil etc
      • AngryData 11mo ago
        All these low profile tires do make it a lot harder to eyeball your tires to an acceptable level and tell if they are low. But low profile tires are just in general kind of crappy already.
      • ssl-3 11mo ago
        Nonsense. Information is good. I do have a walk around the car before I set forth, but stuff happens. Some drives are very long -- hours and hours between stops. I've had tires that aired themselves down during a drive. TPMS can alert me to that issue before I get an opportunity to have another walk-around, so I can stop and address it before it becomes a safety concern. It's fine if someone want to live in a world without monitoring systems; anyone is free to drive an old car with points ignition and a carb if they want (or mechanical diesel! with an air starter, even! no electricity needed at all!). And sure, there's a certain joy to driving something of relative mechanical simplicity. But I like modern cars. And I like things like temperature gauges, closed-loop electronic fuel injection, oil pressure indicators, ABS, traction control, backup cameras, and [I dare say] tire pressure monitoring. I like cruise control. I like headlights that turn themselves on when necessary, and off again when they're unnecessary. And as one might correctly surmise: It doesn't have to be that way: There's other ways to live. A person can also choose to walk, ride a bike, use a horse, commit to a lifestyle that is centered around public transportation, or whatever. The world is full of options. I've chosen my path, and you can also choose yours. (And no, that doesn't make me inattentive. My path involves both a belt and suspenders.)
        • birksherty 11mo ago
          Nonsense. People are still driving cars without TPMS, they can feel the difference while driving and do tire pressure checkups regular intervals depending on run. No issue.
          • ssl-3 11mo ago
            Of course. A skilled driver knows their car very well, and can note by feel that the car is pulling somewhat to one side and correctly identify that this is due to low tire pressure instead of an external effect like road condition or wind, and then decide whether to address it or keep going. A skilled driver can notice all kinds of other stuff using their senses, too. For instance: When there's a plume of coolant coming out of the hood in front of them, they can deduce from observation that the engine temperature may be very high. They can also identify low oil pressure by observing the clacks and bangs of an engine that is starved for oil and tearing itself apart, or even by the silence of an engine that has ceased. Or: Information. A light can illuminate on the dashboard the before these conditions are pronounced enough to feel, and the driver may then elect to use this abundance of information to take action before it snowballs into something that may become expensive or dangerous.
    • ErroneousBosh 11mo ago
      Tyre pressure sensors have done nothing to affect that.
    • elzbardico 11mo ago
      Frankly? I do. Remove alcohol and drugs from the equation, and driving is an absurdly safe activity. Those intrusive features have very little to do with safety.
    • neuralRiot 11mo ago
      I hardly doubt a low tire will mean a death sentence, usually you can tell when a tire is too low way before it is a problem, same as many things in the car, just pay attention to it and you’ll know when something is “off”.