There’s an interesting trick question that catches a lot of high school physics students off their guard. The question is this: In what direction is the force exerted by a tyre on the road, which contributes to the motion of the car. The trick is this – the force is actually opposite to the direction of the car’s travel. That’s because the car is propelled by the friction between the tyre and the road. It’s the push of the road against the tyre that gets the car moving forward. This is called traction.
This means that the car’s motion depends on the tyres being able to push properly against the road and vice versa, which means that their needs to be significant traction between the two. If there isn’t then bad things happen – your tyres start to skid, and you can easily lose control of your vehicle.
Now, when your tyres are underinflated or worn out, they don’t have as much traction, and that’s when these sorts of accidents occur. So to prevent this from happening, it’s important to monitor your tyre pressure – and that’s the point of the tyre pressure monitor.
A tyre pressure monitoring system measures the pressure levels inside your tyres and will alert you if the tyres are underinflated – a condition that increases tyre wear and thus reduces the traction of your tyres even further. Using specialised tyre sensors, the system can check what the pressure is like – and by extension, if the pressure could really be better. Once you know that, you can pump your tyres back up to the optimal pressure, before unpleasant effects like tyre wear, excess fuel consumption, and increased stopping distance set in or go on for too long. With the help of Safety Dave, you can keep your driving as safe as can be!