Your car’s tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) is there to alert you if one or more of the tires are considerably under-inflated and could lead to hazardous driving conditions. On the instrument panel of the dashboard, a yellow sign in the form of a tire cross-section which resembles a horseshoe with an exclamation point flashes when the tire pressure is low.
Your vehicle’s indicator light has a past. It has a history that dates back to a time when drivers lacked knowledge about the optimum tire pressure, leading to several fatal car accidents that could have been averted. It’s estimated that a sizable number of cars still travel the roads every day with underinflated tires.
The anti-lock brake system’s wheel speed sensors are often used by an indirect TPMS. On-board computer systems can employ these sensors to compare wheel revolution rates between individual wheels as well as to other vehicle operation data, such as speed. Each vehicle has their own system. For examples caravans have caravan TPMS.
The computer can determine the relative size of the tires on your car based on how quickly each wheel rotates. The computer determines that a tire is underinflated when a wheel starts spinning more quickly than normal and warns the driver accordingly.
Therefore, a system for indirect tire pressure monitoring does not truly measure tire pressure. The type of measurement you could see with a tire gauge is not being processed electronically here. An indirect tire pressure monitor only counts the rotational speed of your tires and sends instructions to the computer to activate the indication light when something seems off with the rotation.
Instead of only using information about wheel revolutions from the anti-lock brake system, Direct TPMS uses pressure monitoring sensors inside each tire to track particular pressure levels.
Even tire temperature readings may be obtained from sensors in a direct TPMS. All of this information is delivered by the direct tire pressure monitoring system to a central control module, where it is evaluated, translated, and, if the tire pressure is lower than it should be, sent straight to your dashboard where the indicator light turns on. All of this information is often wirelessly sent by a direct tire pressure monitor. Every sensor has its own serial number. This is how the system makes distinctions between pressure measurements for each particular tire as well as between itself and systems on other cars.
Both systems accomplish the same thing and turn on the same indication light, despite the fact that their methods may differ. Even though a TPMS can provide precise alerts when maintained properly, manual air pressure checks should still be performed regularly. Instead, think of a TPMS as an additional tool in your toolbox for car maintenance.
So this is the importance of having a tire pressure monitoring system and how it can be helpful to you in many ways.