You might have a point there - the Lexus-ization of vehicles where drivers are much more isolated, but it amazes me the stuff people miss. There are cars I've seen with clear tire inflation issues that keep getting driven... yet just looking at the tire you can tell there's a problem!

Now if you guys would just expand into the northeast!

 

Well of course, those are the same people who ignore the TPMS when it comes on as well. That is why the TPMS manufacturers still recommend you check your air at least once a month.

What state do you live in?

 

New Jersey. Ohio and North Carolina are a ways away.

 

Forget the TMPS. If the light on the dash disturbs you cover it with a piece of black tape. Another worthless invention by our illustrious dummies in Washington. I'd be willing to bet the TPMS is more prone to leaks than tire valve.

 

Yeah, definitely a little out of the way for you. We are trying to expand to service our customers all over the states. However, until we do you can always visit Discount Tire Direct to get the same great service shipped to your door.


New technology is always prone to issues, but they are figuring that out and correcting it as quickly as possible. The aluminum stem has issues with corroding just like the wheels on your car. However, the TPMS manufactures have started building rubber based stems for the sensors that solve that problem. For those vehicle that already have the aluminum based sensors installed, they just introduced a few models of universal sensors that work in 90% of all vehicles and they are rubber stem based.

Remember, safety devices are always created cause there is a demand. Seat belts for instance, would not have been needed if drivers didn't get into accidents. Air pressure does not get checked, tires blow out, accidents happen, new safety devices are created.

 

Still won't help with reprogramming the car to new TPMS sensors and I don't have a tire changing machine either.

That's part of the problem - mandate TPMS, but forget about the infrastructure needed to support TPMS swaps and such. I don't know why they didn't specify a standard so that along with TPMS, each car has to have a built-in ability for a DIY person to initiate the re-learning process when new sensors are installed (instead of requiring special tools). And why TPMS tells you if you have an inflation issue, but it isn't mandated that systems must alert the driver to which tire/s are the ones that are under-inflated.

Demand by industry proponents that have some vested interest, or demand by consumers of the products? A lot of traffic safety standards are not necessarily consumer initiated, but stuff the insurance industry, etc wants.

Meantime, cars are getting heavier, filled with more gadgets that break or require maintenance, etc... yet we want to get more efficient with gas usage too. The ultimate safety standard would be to ban cars entirely... it really would eliminate auto accidents! Regulating our way to safety shows the sad that where the responsibility is being removed from the drivers/individuals.

 

Seat belts originally in 56 Fords were a complete sales failure. Nobody wanted them.
Government bureaucrats decided that seat belts, like tire pressure monitoring, were needed on the basis of insurance companies looking to reduce claims. Perhaps you can call that demand, but like most 'safety' additions, their cost exceeded the 'savings'. Worse, the very drivers that stood to need them the most are the very ones that ignore them completely. The most prevalent are the 'check engine' light, the 'low oil pressure' light, and indeed the TPMS light.
The TPMS was introduced after the SUV's that were driven overloaded crashed due to blowouts; the TPMS light wouldn't have done much good because the tire pressure was adequate by what would have been the TPMS setting but inadequate for the speeds driven with the load the tires carried. SUV's installed upgraded tires and that 'solved' the problem.

 

Right, nobody wanted seat belts but they were mandated and have saved HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of lives. I'm sure they've paid for themselves a zillion times over.

I would like to see your evidence that most safety additions cost more than they save. Even airbags, which are expensive, save lots and lots of lives. The value of one life saved? More than a whole lot of cars.

So you check your tire pressure regularly. How often do you check the tire pressure on your mom's car?

 

Most safety features we take for granted today are the result of government regulation, not competition with Volvo. Some were stupid (5mph bumpers).

I'm careful about maintaining cars. I keep a compressor in the garage with pressure gauges and admonish the kids to check their tires. Yet when I got the Fit the TPM light came on the 2nd day. One tire was at 28lbs. Pretty cool.

The car it replaced once had new tires installed with a damaged valve stem. I didn't realize it until I noticed my MPG had dropped about 10% for no apparent reason. The tire with the bad valve stem had dropped to 23LBS over a few days. I didn't notice it driving or in appearance. And I notice stuff.

The vast majority of car operators don't ever check their tires (I know: 3 out of 4 people in my household don't). TPMS is a life saver. Probably more than ABS ever will be. Not too many people bitching about ABS (or VSC). IMO...

 

More lives could be saved if the accidents were avoided totally by having better drivers on the road. A safety device is only useful after the fact... prevention is far better than cure.

And still, not everyone wears a safety belt today. They tried to force people with those automatic belt systems, but those are now a failure and cars don't have them anymore.

The cost of airbags would be pure cost, if we avoid collisions to begin with. Avoidance/prevention is far better from a cost perspective. The root of the problem are bad drivers, and we're trying to solve it by moving individual responsibility to devices. And even there, there's no guarantee people will buckle up.

Like I said - you want real 100% safety? Just ban cars altogether.

And the problem with mandates? They get it wrong and don't think of all the issues and then have to fix it later. Airbags KILLED people who didn't buckle up initially, so they now have airbags deactivated if the belt is not secured. Don't buckle up, and the airbags and seatbelts are practically useless.

The safe drivers, as mahout says - are the ones that will buckle up, and those unsafe ones, who are getting killed, are gonna get killed with or without airbags and seatbelts.

As for the Exploder-gate saga - first of all, a vehicle with a high center of gravity is not the most stable of platforms, and as much Ford/Bridgestone got blamed for it, if the drivers had driven SUVs more responsibly understanding the limitations of such a vehicle, it would have avoided a bunch of those problems/rollovers.

 

Safe drivers get killed too. We're not perfect. And people crash into us. Putting safety equipment into cars is not in conflict with trying to get people to drive better. They are separate issues.

 

No but at some point you've got to decide what you want to put in that gives the best bang for the buck. Personally for me, I think having better brakes on a car is a far better safety option than having TPMS sensors. I don't have issues with airbags or seat belts, but some of the safety stuff is just stupid. An underinflated tire in itself won't be fatal either - its bad driving in this instance that ultimately causes problems, on, and SUVs with their high center of gravity issues, which is what caused TPMS to be forced upon all cars.

The next thing coming up is backup cameras - this is again another stupid thing thanks to the SUV loving crowd... and all too often I've seen plenty of incapable drivers in big vehicles. They should mandate having a separate license requirement instead - if you want to drive a pickup or big vehicle, you better be a good driver capable of it first.

Then there's the crash test standards - they are not necessarily reflective of real world, but every car manufacturer now tries to build something that will ace those tests. A big hunk of stiff old iron is still a viable option if you ask me, vs. the crumple can approach we have today. But I guess with airbags, it won't matter, cars are totalled upon any significant impact.

Just strikes me as a wasteful approach.

 

I do agree that when they made TPMS a requirement for all vehicles, they should have specified one set of rules that everyone had to follow. Instead they simply say the vehicle has to warn you if a tire is low, but it doesn't matter if it tells you which one. That is left up to each vehicle manufacturer to decide how the vehicle responds.

For the DIY'ers, almost all Ford's and GM's have the ability to reprogram the vehicle yourself. All that is needed it to set the vehicle into relearn mode, and continuously adjust each tire pressure until the horn chirps. Ford has even gone as far as putting a small device, about the size of a key less fob, that is a sensor scanner for your individual vehicle.


TPMS was introduced well before that time, and wasn't mandated until around 2005 to 2006. People are still going back and forth over who's fault it was on the SUV rollover fiasco, and that will most likely never change. What I can say from experience is that a good portion of blowouts, like what happened with the SUV's, can be caused from under inflation. An under inflated tire can't maintain its shape and becomes flatter than intended while in contact with the road. If a vehicle’s tires are under inflated by only 6 psi it could lead to tire failure. Additionally, the tire’s tread life could be reduced by as much as 25%. Lower inflation pressure will allow the tire to bend more as it rolls. This will build up internal heat, increase rolling resistance and cause a reduction in fuel economy of up to 5%. You would experience a significant loss of steering precision and cornering stability. While 6 psi doesn’t seem excessively low, remember, it usually represents about 20% of the tire’s recommended pressure. TPMS is designed to go off when a tires pressure has dropped 4-5 pounds below the manufacturers recommended pressure.

 

The bang for the buck to me is the "wal-mart" approach to safety. Not everything should be about what's cheapest.

An underinflated tire IS a safety issue. When Braking, (especially under hard braking) tires with different pressure levels will grip/respond differently. Add the sudden need to change direction while braking and that throws another huge variable into the mix which can cause an underinflated tire to blow.

I'm in agreement here with Brain Champ. Safety equipment and better drivers are not mutually exclusive, nor are they commutative. Both need to happen. Cars today are 100x safer than they were years ago but they still need to improve upon safety. Progress in this area will continue to aide in preservation of life. Also remember that these additions aren't necessarily only aiding in notifying the driver that tires are low, but are also elements of the VSA systems which again improve the safety of vehicles on the road. without TPMS you can't have VSA.

This same discussion has happened many times back when antilock brakes were not standard on most all vehicles but like TPMS, they have multiple benefits. Slowing a car quickly, and being an integral part of VSA and TCS are just a few. ALB was seen as "evil" and "took control away from the driver" but is now widely accepted as being a Huge benefit to safety.

It's true that ALB, TCS, VSA, TPMS (acronyms in general) take control away from the driver... simply because they do it better. It's like having a professional race car driver as a Chauffeur. You may not have control of the car but you have someone who can drive better at the wheel.

~SB

 

Seat belts are of course very useful devices. I had them in my race cars in the fifties and my 56 Ford, and on my parents 56 Ford. Salesman thopught I was strange for ordering them til he found out I was a racer.
The total cost of developing, testing and installing seat belts in the cars I helped manufacture cost a lot more than the costs of 'saved' lives back then., before the days of 'lawyer enhancement'. Then, as today, there is not much real information on the number of lives or injuries that are 'saved' as a result of seat belts particularly as a result of far higher street speeds now than in the fifties when even 65 mph was very fast on the street.. I can attest from several race crashes that I am here today because of seat belts and roll cages. One definitely. Still far too many crahes involve victims who did not appear to be wearing seat belts from observations by some of my law enforcement friends. Most fatal crashes involve DWI and seat belts aren't worn by virtually all of the victims, even the passengers.
One favorite proposal by a NHSTA investigator was to save the most lives we should install swords instead od airbags because then drivers would be 10 times more careful until they were drunk and then they'd remove themselves from being hazards. Unfortunately, based on my crashed vehicle analyses that just might be true.
My one inbstance of being in a streetcrash the airbag probably didn't save my life (seat belt and collapsible frame structure gets that credit) but my nose was broken, my glassesbroken and two black eyes were the result of my air bag deploying. No other injuries but my car was demolished by a drunk pickup driver.
Yes, my father added vehicle weekly checks to my responsibilities when I was 10 so yes I checked everybody's tire pressures and brought them to 32 psi if it was needed. my generation believed they should be self-reliant and not wards of the government which is why we are in thefinancial bind now.
BTW I'm 75 now so its been a long time since I checked my mom's tires, or oil or...,but I still check my wife's car at least once a week. Do you even check your tires? Or do you check your oil? or...
One Honda engineer expressed the 'oil minder' as being the result of owner's passing the buck for their responsibility to someone else and that even then half the owner's have no idea what it means or what to do about it. In that circumstances all the safety devices in the world are useless. Perhaps we should lower speed limits to 10 mph to really save lives. Traffic fatalities are down quite a bit but they don't seem to be related to the introduction of seat belts. Hard to say but I attribute the reductions on better chassis and brakes. Even ifyou assumed 10% of the fatalities could or would have been saved by seat belts you won't accumulate hundreds of thounsands of lives but maybe a hundred thousand. Maybe.
Cheers. You fit right in with today's Obama socialist generation.
Sorry, can't resist; we get so many customers who complain that something is wrong with their car that the government didn't prevent instead of their own fault I can't resist the vent.

cheers anyway.

 

Where the heck do you get this information? As I said before, VSA does not depend on TPMS... except in the nanny instance that they won't allow you to disable VSA, if your TPMS is triggered.

Do I have to say this again and again?

VSA DOES NOT REQUIRE TPMS!!!



Try doing some reading before you start spouting lies...

DO I NEED TPMS? The million dollar question..... - Cars Vs. Roads: Brought to you by MAC | Tire Rack

Question 1: Do I need Tire Pressure Monitors if my car came with them?
Answer: Not necessarily. Do you like a bright light on the dash all the time? If you answered
no, then you need sensors as most vehicles turn on a warning light when sensors are
not being read. Do you have a HONDA with vehicle stability control? If you answered
YES then you will not be able to disable the VSA without sensors. There are
some other vehicles that have limitations like this, so reference your owner's manual
for your specific vehicle.

VSA might be actually able to benefit from TPMS if the sensors were able to transmit exact inflation pressures of each tire to VSA, but the system Honda uses today has ZERO intelligence and is useless except as a nanny monitor, for VSA.

And even VSA is again a reflection of deteriorating driving skills today.

 

Damn, what did someone have for breakfast this morning, Carnation instant Bitch? (jk... been wanting to use that for a while now )

VSA on the FIT does require tpms to engage/disengage and because the sysetm doesn't monitor wheels individually, it doesn't control each one separately. on other vehicles, albeit at this point the more expensive ones, the individual tire pressure IS monitored and wheels are controlled independently by the VSA system. again, maybe not on the fit (and yes, I realize we are on FIT freak). but as the computers become more powerful, smarter, and CHEAPER, this will make it's way into the economy car class of vehicles.

I should have phrased it slightly differently.

Without TPMS, you can't have a FULLY FUNCTIONAL VSA SYSTEM (which includes the ability for the system to engage and disengage it as needed.)

Does this help?

~SB

 

Actually the system in the Fit is fully functional without VSA, you just cannot disengage it.

So just get rid of TPMS, and allow VSA to be disengaged as that requires a switch, not TPMS.

You still fail to show us how TPMS is so wonderfully great as a safety innovation. The fact is, tire problems are a cause of accidents, but the government in its infinite wisdom had to try to show they were doing something. So TPMS became the white elephant they threw upon the public, but it hardly addresses the vast myriad of tire problems.

Worn tires, OVER-inflated tires, potholes (some bad ass roads out there), etc are to blame as well... all things TPMS does not address. And even under-inflation is not addressed until 25% of required tire pressure is lost... ie. the system is not sensitive enough, and by that time, you will already see decreased mileage and experience bad tire wear.

I have a huge issue with this because TPMS is a big cover up and it really is a joke as it stands today. Unless you're one of those gullible millions who eat up all the BS and think your regulators can solve all your problems, I don't see why this is so hard to understand, the system has many shortcomings.

And you know the people who don't buckle up? They're the same people who aren't going to bother with a check engine light or TPMS light either.

The person who actually understands VSA and knows enough to know what the system does and how to disengage it for their vehicle, are the exact people who will be concerned about their tire pressures... it matters to the handling of the car.

 

In the SAE papers regarding vehicle stability control I could not find a reference to including TPMS sensors in their inputs. The wheel speed sensors would do the same thing as TPMS and they are included. Vehicle Stability Assist (such as Hondas) require knowing the differential speed between wheels to know which brakes to apply by computer. And any idea that TPMS would 'turn off' VSA isn't correct; there is no reason to turn off VSA. Unless, of couse you like legal suits.

 

Given that 85% of people (roughly) are now wearing seat belts and yet most fatalities involve drivers not wearing them, that's pretty good evidence that seat belts are saving lives.

As a former economist I can say that being 'wards of the government' as you put it isn't what got us into the financial mess. If anything it was lack of effective regulations. But if you don't want to be a ward of the government nor be involved in anything 'socialist' please return your social security money and get off medicare.