Your vehicle is equipped with a tire pressure monitor system. This system notifies you if the tire pressure is too low. When you get the Service Tire Monitor warning, it indicates that there is as failure in the system, not that the tire pressure is (necessarily) too low.
If you do get this warning message, the first thing you should do is check the actual tire pressure. This message can occur when the tire pressure is extremely low, or extremely high. Once you confirm that the tire pressure is normal (you can look on the inside of the driver’s door jam to see what the tire pressure should be), it is safe to drive the vehicle as though you don’t have a tire pressure monitoring system.
SVC Tire Monitor Warning: Causes
1. Tire Pressure Too High/Low
If the tire pressure is way outside of factory specs the SVC Tire Monitor warning can come on. This is know to happen when the weather is extremely hot or cold. Check the actual tire pressure and start from there. The system will report if a tire is OVER INFLATED so don’t just eyeball it.
2. Wrong Wheel
If you put a new wheel on your vehicle you’ll need to have the tire pressure sensor migrated as well. Otherwise, there’s nothing for the system to communicate with and the SVC Tire Monitor warning will populate in the message center.
3. Bad Tire Pressure Sensor
The tire pressure sensor sits inside the wheel and is constantly checking the tire pressure. The life of a tire pressure sensor is a tough one, and they do have batteries that can fail. If you are driving a vehicle that is ten years old or older, the battery very well could be the cause of the sensor failure. Unfortunately, replacing the sensor is usually the only way to fix it.
Conclusion
Most tire shops will be able to handle replacing the TPMS sensor for you. If you’d like to take a stab at it yourself, this article goes over how to identify which sensor is at fault, and how to go about resetting the TPMS system. Just remember, as long as you are aware of the actual tire pressure in the vehicle, there is no immediate danger that comes from driving with the SVC tire monitor warning active.