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TPMS
- Pressure Safe
Tyre
Pressure Monitoring System
‘Let your tyres tell you
when they need air’
WHAT IS A TYRE PRESSURE
MONITOR SYSTEM AND WHY DO I NEED ONE?
These are without doubt the two
most common questions we hear when someone first learns that such a
device even exists. Fortunately for the average Australian motorist
we have never been exposed to an event like the Firestone tyre
disaster in the United States, which claimed so many lives it lead
to the federal government passing legislation to make tyre pressure
monitoring systems (TPMS) mandatory on all new vehicles. We
in Australia are relatively uneducated about why tyre pressures
actually matter, yet alone the consequences of what can go wrong if
they are not correct.
The process of determining why you
should care about your tyre pressures then leads directly to why
the rest of the world is already accepting of the TPMS technology
as a necessity rather than a luxury. As shown in a recent segment
on A Current Affair, Ian Luff, one of Australia’s foremost experts
on driver training, showed the exact effects of under inflated
tyres. As was pointed out during the controlled testing, braking
distances were fundamentally increased and handling through a
slalom course led to the complete loss of control of the vehicle.
It was then that they conducted a random test of a car park and
found some tyre pressures down to 18 psi!
We see both new car manufacturers
and major tyre chains now advertising the increased benefits of
either increased fuel economy or low rolling resistance tyres to
convince you that theirs is a more economical alternative. What
people fail to realise is that unless you keep the pressure at or
above the recommended level, both fuel economy and rolling
resistance, but far more importantly safety, will quickly diminish.
Remember the fundamental fact: it is the air in the
tyre that separates the vehicle from the road, not the tyre
structure itself. What is the benefit of purchasing a super fuel
efficient car, if you don’t check the tyre pressure to make sure it
is still the same as the manufacturer recommended it
needs to be to achieve that great fuel efficiency?
What is the point of paying slightly more for a new generation low
rolling resistance tyre to improve your fuel economy if it no
longer has low rolling resistance due to under inflation?
These are the fundamental truths of
the age we live in. With greatly lengthened service intervals on
new cars, lack of accurate pressure gauges at the local service
station, and most driver reluctance to worry about checking
pressure as the tyres look ok, how would you know?
The news services will gladly document the tragic loss of life
caused by vehicle accidents, but what you don’t see is what the
causes of the loss of vehicle control were. With the government and
police, quite correctly, targeting the message that speed and
alcohol kill, what is often not taken into consideration is the
effect of a catastrophic tyre failure, most of which can be
detected if an early warning system such as a TPMS device was
fitted.
The figures are there; most people
cringe when asked the last time they checked their tyres, gladly
admitting it is time consuming to check the only thing between them
and the four patches of rubber, about the same size as the palm of
your hand, that hold your one and a half tonne car on to a wet road
at 100 km/h. Until an Australian government decides to make
these life saving devices mandatory on all new vehicles, as has
recently been done with ESC, every motorist should be asking
themselves if they can afford not to have a
TPMS system fitted.
  
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