TPMS got me out of a potentially bad situation
After 10 years of driving cars with tire pressure monitoring, it saved my butt the other day.
I was driving on a remote stretch of interstate a few days ago. Everything was fine when my TPMS light suddenly turned on. I immediately slowed down to determine if I had a flat tire. The car was handling normally so I figured I didn't have a flat...yet. I keep about 50psi in my tires and the TPMS light in a Mirage comes on at 25-26 PSI. So even it wasn't flat, one of my tires had dropped 20+ PSI!?!
So why didn't I just pull over on the shoulder and check it out?
I was out in the middle of nowhere, but there was still too much traffic to do it safely. The visibility was limited because it was early in the morning...and people were driving 75 mph. I'm paranoid about distracted drivers drifting off the road. I'd rather trash a tire than get killed...so I kept going.
I made it another few miles (sweating bullets) to the next exit and pulled into a small gas station. Luckily they had one of those pay air pumps (whatever happened to free air?).
I found one of my rear tires with only 23PSI. I aired it back up to 45 (as high as the pump would go). I saw a small screw head in the tire...but with no plug kit I wasn't going to touch it. I made it to my destination just as the TPMS light lit up again.
I'm pretty sure that without a "heads-up" from that TPMS warning light, I would have kept driving until the car didn't feel right. By that time I may have either damaged the tire or I would have been forced to pull over in a less than ideal situation.
If you've ever had an Enasave tire in your hands when it's not mounted on a wheel, the sidewall of these things is surprisingly thin. It would be really easy to damage one if it was severely under-inflated at freeway speeds for an extended period. Even though I don't have Enasaves on my car, I'm sure the sidewalls of my current tires probably aren't much better.
So if you're ignoring a TPMS light in your car, consider getting it fixed. It might save you a tire (or more) some day.
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View my fuel log 2015 Mirage ES 1.2 manual: 52.2 mpg (US) ... 22.2 km/L ... 4.5 L/100 km ... 62.6 mpg (Imp)