You can find these on the car's driver's-side doorjamb or in the owner's manual.

Locate the tire-pressure recommendations provided by your car's manufacturer.

There's a quick and easy way to tell if your car has low tire pressure: Getty Images Are Your Vehicle's Tires Underinflated? This damage will shorten a tire's life, leading to premature replacement of this costly vehicle component. This often shows up in unusually heavy wear on both a tire's inner and outer shoulders. Because low tire pressure distorts the tire's footprint-where your car's rubber contacts the road-tire wear can increase dramatically. Low tire pressure also reduces tire life. Low tire pressure robs your tires of the grip and responsiveness they need to help you avoid accidents. Low tire pressure can be especially harmful during an emergency situation, when you're trying to avoid an accident and you need every ounce of your car's responsiveness and cornering or braking traction. Response to your steering inputs gets slower and sloppy, and braking distances lengthen. The tire is less stable and has less traction. The tread, the contact point with the road, squirms.

When a tire is underinflated, its sidewalls flex more than they were designed to during cornering and braking. Low tire pressure hurts your car's handling as well. A tire with less air in it is softer, deflects more readily, and is more easily punctured by the sharp edge of a pothole.īuy Now Low Tire Pressure Adversely Affects Handling Still, even at lower speeds, there are dangers. The biggest chance of this happening is when you're on the interstate at higher speeds there's less of a chance in stop-and-go driving because the tire is turning slowly and not building up as much heat. A blowout is sudden and unexpected and can cause a loss of control that leads to an accident.

If this happens suddenly, a blowout can result. If the overheating gets severe, a section of the tire's rubber can separate from its carcass-the mix of fabric and steel that the tire is built on. When air pressure gets too low, the tire's sidewalls flex more, and heat builds up within the tire. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of suffering a tire blowout knows how traumatic it can be.

You absolutely want to avoid letting your tire pressure get too low. Inadequate tire inflation can shorten the life of your car's tires, negatively affect your vehicle's performance, and maybe even cause a tire to fail. Many drivers don't give a great deal of thought to tire pressure, let alone worry about low tire pressure-but they should.

How to tell if a tire is run flat