DOT Guidelines
The recent U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) release of its guidelines on the topic of distracted driving has spurred a good deal of discussion in the media. The guidelines call for automakers to disable applications in the vehicles center stack or infotainment system that allow drivers to manually access social media, surf the Web or send text messages while on the road.
All well and good. Very, very good in fact. Really, do we want drivers web surfing or reading text messages while driving?
More Distractions
But all of the attention is on infotainment systems. At DashboardSymbols.com, we see this focus on distracted driving as an opportunity to reexamine how vehicles communicate with drivers in general. Today’s advanced vehicles are in one form or another continually talking to drivers, either with warning lights and tell-tales or through short and often difficult to interpret text messages. This growing phenomenon is being completely ignored by the DOT and manufacturers alike, and yet poses a similar if not more serious distraction threat.
Warning lights and indicators have long been the province of a vehicle’s instrument panel and the preferred means of communication between the vehicle and its driver. An entire collection of automotive hieroglyphics has been developed and continues to be developed.
Now, vehicles with multifunction displays offer multiple screens to peer at while driving: text on navigation information, tire pressures, fuel consumption, telephone use, and more may be available. And each segment likely offers additional information through menu manipulation. These items are generally very easily accessed with controls mounted on the steering wheel, but the information displayed ultimately requires the driver’s eyes to absorb.
Warning symbols and indicators can already be problematic. Unless a driver has dealt with a malfunction in a given system in the past, the appearance of what will be an unfamiliar warning light can cause near panic. And with each new system comes a new tell-tale. The average driver simply does not have the time in a busy life to memorize all the various scenarios these indicators present. Thus when a new one appears, the question for the driver becomes ‘is my car safe to drive?’ That answer is rarely obvious and invariably leads to calls to roadside services or service departments.
And now, message screens are being employed to add instruction, explanation or general information on a vehicle’s status. The idea is sound, but the implementation lies squarely at the center of the DOT’s current concern.
Our perspective is that the driver distraction debate is an opportunity to step back and reconsider the entire landscape. Vehicles are in constant communication with their drivers, and are becoming communication hubs, bringing information and entertainment from without.
Voice commands are in play and offer a path to follow. Perhaps it is time for vehicles themselves to be given a voice. And not just for reading text messages aloud. In theory, it could speak aloud the meaning of a given tell-tale so a lay person can understand, or the status of tires pressures on request, and so on. Certainly there are challenges in implementation – variations in definitions, requests to repeat or no longer repeat information, etc – but it is time to consider allowing a vehicle to communicate its status through 2-way voice interaction. The iPhone’s Siri points the way.
——————————————————————-
Remember that only proper service and repair procedures will ensure the safe and reliable operation of your car. In addition, proper safety procedures and precautions, such as the use of safety goggles, the right tools and the equipment should be followed at all times to eliminate the possibility of personal injury or improper service which could damage the vehicle or compromise its safety.
These posts are for information sharing purposes only, and should not be used in lieu of an OEM service manual or factory authorized service procedure. We are not in the auto repair business nor do we publish automotive service manuals. Nothing we include on these pages and posts has been reviewed, approved or authorized by any vehicle manufacturer.
Technology is always changing and what is current and accurate today may be literally out-of-date and inaccurate tomorrow. And when it comes to the current state of flux in the auto industry, nothing is more true.
The author has 25 years of automotive experience and has assembled the most extensive collection of symbols and warning lights anywhere (over 1,000!) and can help you open and start any keyless start car with a dead key fob battery. BA, St. Joseph’s College, ME: MS, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY
Advanced stability control and traction control systems are the primary culprits, or more to the point, the electronics that they depend on. And they are the least likely to actually fail. These systems rely on signals from the electronics controlling the operation of the engine, transmission, 
Multiple lights rarely, if ever, mean multiple system faults. A fault in the engine (
In a simpler day, if your engine’s oil pressure dropped too low, your dashboard, or more properly, your instrument panel, would have had an analog oil pressure gauge displaying the pressure reading and a warning light, a red dot, that would come on to get your attention. Then some manufacturers did away with the gauge altogether, leaving only the red dot or “Idiot” light. There would have been a temperature gauge plus a light to warn a driver if the engine’s temperature rose too high. But now you might not see a gauge at all. In the meantime, “Idiot” lights have proliferated to the point of madness. And as a driver, you need to be a “road scholar” (sorry) to understand them all.
However, in today’s vehicles, there could never be a corresponding gauge to compliment a Check Engine light, or the ABS (anti-lock brake) light, or a Drivetrain Trouble light, or for any of the dozens of text and picture tell-tales that have permeated vehicle instrument panels over the last few decades.
Maybe the most troubling about the “Prodigy” lights is that when one of them crops up, it indicates a problem or malfunction has already occurred. For instance, there is no gauge to indicate a change in the anti-lock brakes. If a malfunction occurs, a tell-tale appears. The same for an electronic throttle, the power steering, the stability control system, or any of the other advanced, and often electronic, systems.
The Ever-growing Dashboard Symbols Saga…
A Short History
Some 13 years ago when we started this site, we believed that the driving public had no idea what it was up against in trying to understand the warning lights and dashboard symbols being thrown at them by their car’s instrument panel.
We had no idea where this would lead.
The Symbols Count
We now host 986 (now over 1000!) of warning lights and indicators! Nine hundred and eighty six! Most are image-style indicators but there are also nearly 200 text indicators.
Every year we update the warning lights from 47 manufacturers who have or currently do sell vehicles in North America and we made the mistake of counting them last week.
If this sounds absurd to you, well we couldn’t agree more. The table below illustrates the problem.
If you count them, you’ll find 22 different images representing suspension systems. Essentially every manufacturer gets to choose an image style to use. Some include text, which is helpful, and others include a sketch of a vehicle, which is also helpful.
But note the pair that look like a hat with an arrow inside and others that don’t bear any resemblance to anything an average person can relate to!
Idiot lights, or tell-tales, as they are known only in the industry, were designed to help drivers who didn’t understand how to read a gauge and to get your attention. To those who actually did know how to read the gauges, and watched them like a hawk, the tell-tales came to be known as Idiot lights. And the term stuck.
However, in today’s vehicles, there could never be a corresponding gauge to compliment a Check Engine light, or the ABS (anti-lock brake) light for example. There actually could be a pressure gauge associated with air suspension systems represented by some of the symbols in the table. But the industry is long past gauges.
There may be 30 to 40 picture or text tell-tales on a modern instrument panel, each connected to some system in your car. We’ve counted as many as one hundred in some models! And they may illuminate in twos and threes if a problem is detected. That is, a problem with one system causes other systems that are dependent on the first to be shut off. Each of those systems will have an associated, and now illuminated, tell-tale. Today, a driver needs to be an automotive prodigy to know what’s going on.
We’ve called on the industry to trash this near useless system in the past in favor of the car actually telling a driver what’s up and what they can and can’t do. The information is in the vehicle’s computer, but is accessible only to technicians with the proper equipment.
There has been some talk of simplification, but we update the symbols in new cars every year, and when we’re done with 2024, we can assure you that another 30 to 50 symbols will be added to our pages.
We think you, the driver needs help and we are here to do just that. We ultimately hope that the way vehicles communicate with drivers is changed. In the meantime, if you are confused by the symbols that show up on your instrument panel, bookmark this site. We’ll do everything we can to help you not feel like an an “Idiot”!
——————————————————————-
Remember that only proper service and repair procedures will ensure the safe and reliable operation of your car. In addition, proper safety procedures and precautions, such as the use of safety goggles, the right tools and the equipment should be followed at all times to eliminate the possibility of personal injury or improper service which could damage the vehicle or compromise its safety.
These posts are for information sharing purposes only, and should not be used in lieu of an OEM service manual or factory authorized service procedure. We are not in the auto repair business nor do we publish automotive service manuals. Nothing we include on these pages and posts has been reviewed, approved or authorized by any vehicle manufacturer.
Technology is always changing and what is current and accurate today may be literally out-of-date and inaccurate tomorrow. And when it comes to the current state of flux in the auto industry, nothing is more true.
The author has 25 years of automotive experience and has assembled the most extensive collection of symbols and warning lights anywhere (over 1,000!) and can help you open and start any keyless start car with a dead key fob battery. BA, St. Joseph’s College, ME: MS, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY