Decoding the Mystery of Warning Lights

There once was a time when you had to have the finely-attuned senses of a bat to detect when something was amiss in the car. Only a well-trained ear could recognise all the problems betrayed by the clinking, clicking, knocking or rattling that was going on among the normal sounds of the engine. On top of that, you needed heaps of technical knowledge to uncover the source and cause of the issue. What with electronics, this is no longer the case (coupled with the fact that you can hardly hear the engine any more).

Modern cars can keep tabs on themselves and warn the driver of possible problems before they have to crawl helplessly to the hard shoulder and call a tow-truck. Every important system has warning lights, so there’s no need to deploy various family members strategically around the car even to report whether your lights and windscreen wipers are working properly. This article has been written to help you grasp what the warning lights mean, so let’s decode them!

Besides the warning lights above, others may also sometimes come to life on the instrument panel. Whether they stay lit up or flash, they are telling the driver important information about the condition of the vehicle or the current journey.

 

 

An expanded list of all warning lights, accompanied by detailed information on their meaning and function, can be downloaded and studied in a PDF document here: