Recent research around motoring habits has shown that many drivers ignore warning lights on their dashboards for a significant amount of time. The research showed that around 4 million motorists in the country saw a dashboard light come on and did nothing about it for at least five days.
The study was commissioned by Kwik Fit, a company which conducts auto repairs, and it also revealed that around one third of all motorists have seen a dashboard warning light come on in the past 12 months. The company have termed this ignoring of the problem, dashboard denial and they highlight the problem that if drivers ignore these warning lights then the chances of the car having a more major problem are significant.
One third of drivers did not investigate the problems for five days, however another one third said that when the warning light came on they investigated it immediately. The other drivers were somewhere in between.
The survey also highlighted that the most common problem that drivers see when it comes to warning lights on the dashboard is the engine system warning. The second most common is to do with the oil level which only affected around seven percent of motorists in the past year.
The survey also showed that of the warning lights that came on around 400,000 people were unaware of what the warning light meant leading them to further ignore the problem and not get it checked out. The survey also showed that people are generally unaware of many warning lights.
The tyre pressure warning light was not recognisable to around half of people who were surveyed. The communications director at Kwik-Fit, Roger Griggs commented, “Warning lights don’t necessarily mean that you need to panic but it is a sign that there is something wrong with your car. You should take immediate efforts to get it investigated.”
