95 thoughts on “What do those car dashboard alarm icons mean?”

    1. Anyone who’s tried to assemble Ikea furniture has experienced the total bafflement of purely symbolic instructions

      1. I get my interpretations from Eric, the World-Cup predicting psychic octopus. He seems to be able to think sideways into the group mind of Ikea designers.

  3. The oil can symbol I think is particularly problematic. How many young adults have heard or seen an oil can?

    +1 for the very obscure reference in the last one.

    1. Hrmph. While I would hesitate (until I’m in a non-bordering country) to describe my wife as anything other then young, I don’t think she’d know what an oil can looks like either …. in fact … squeaky door hinges, puzzlement, oil can and absence of squeaks : nope, she doesn’t know what an oil can looks like, even when told which shelf it’s on, between what coloured boxes of drills, sockets, screwdrivers etc.

      1. Surely you use the spray can for those? I don’t think I’ve ever possessed an oil can.

        And incidentally, engines were NEVER filled from an oil can as depicted in the icon (it would take forever), engine oil cans were a completely different shape which I have never seen on a dashboard icon…

        Come to that, how many cars have external-contracting clasp brakes? Railway rolling stock does…

        1. Spray can of oil? Never even knew such things existed until a couple of months ago. And how would you stop the oil from going everywhere you don’t want it to go? Mask up?
          No, out with the can (with a flexible plastic tip for directing oil flow), a drop onto the end of the hinge pin while working the door. Repeat if the squeak doesn’t stop.

          1. Well, if you’re using CRC or WD-40 or similar products, it’s a very light grade of penetrating oil that doesn’t stain much and wipes off easily.

          2. WD-40 is not now and never has been in the entire history of the universe a lubricating oil. It’s a water-displacing mothballing compound. Using it as a lubricating oil is simply making more trouble for yourself down the line.
            There are uses for such products. They’re not as lubricating oils. Or as penetrating oils. Or easing oils. “Right tool for the right job”, and WD-40 is not the right tool for any job other than mothballing components.

          4. That link breaks on my phone. I guess it’s an ANTI – WE 40 rant. The stuff has genuine uses, but is sorely abused.

          6. Yep, I see 14 different products there, ranging from silicone grease to foamy detergent. That would make about 14 different jobs they’re designed for (which the advertising people have amplified to 2000+ : about typical for advertising people).
            That doesn’t mean that I’ll allow the stuff on my sites. WD-40 brand easing oil, maybe. But the general purpose stuff : no way. It’s plugged too many filters, made too many gas fitting not fit, emptied too many calibration gas bottles … to ever get into any maintenance kit that I’ll let near my equipment. (Not that I directly run that equipment any more. But I trained the people who head that department now, and they’ve seen the problems too.)
            “General Purpose” is not a good advert. Nothing is good for everything, particularly when you come to chemicals.

          7. Well, obviously those products are aimed at the average US-ian week-end handyperson (a species you don’t resemble in the slightest).

            😉

          8. Thanks Diane. From the Wikipedia page:

            “The long-term active ingredient is a non-volatile, viscous oil which remains on the surface, providing lubrication and protection from moisture. This is diluted with a volatile hydrocarbon to give a low viscosity fluid which can be sprayed and thus penetrate crevices. The volatile hydrocarbon then evaporates, leaving the oil behind.”

            I’m not promoting WD-40 specifically, there are many other products, but it can definitely be used for what I said. For seriously mothballing there are much thicker products (which often smell awful. WD-40 smells quite pleasant, probably got aromatic hydrocarbons in it).

    2. +1 for the very obscure reference in the last one.

      +6, surely?
      Taking Rover for a walk?

    3. For that matter how many know that cc means ‘carbon copy ‘ and how many of those know what a carbon copy is?

      1. In 1990 I was working for the US Census Bureau at a local District Office. We had just taken possession of the offices and did not have a xerox machine, so we were using carbon paper when we needed to make a copy. A recent high school graduate that we had hired thought that carbon paper was really cool because “with this we do not need a xerox machine!”.

          1. We called them “onion skins”. If we’re talking about the same technology. There were several wet chemical copying techs in the 60s and 70s.
            I once smashed a bottle of 880 ammonia for the dyline machine in a poorly ventilated lab. For several reasons, that is not a mistake I will repeat.

      2. In a forum hosted by Prof CC and with a more than passing attention to genetics, your question stands like a mouse a a Cat Convocation.

    4. I’ve often thought the same thing of computer icons, especially the envelope for email and the old-school camera for camera – and the shutter sound the phone makes!

      1. Icons designed to replicate the appearance of an obsolete technology … camera phones that click ; mailboxes that raise a flag when occupied … has a name like “skeueomorphic”. It keeps on appearing in the last year of computer journalism, but predictably it has met Prof Murprhy often enough to doubt both definition and spelling.

        1. Yes. I just recently learned the word myself, in an article about all-LCD auto dashboards whose displays replicate old-school instrument panels. It’s an interesting phenomenon, but, having sort of mocked it, I do wonder what else would an icon for “camera,” “mail,” or “phone” look like but its last analog counterpart?

      1. “You are not a number” is from the tv show The Prisoner starring Patrick Mc Goohan. The round balloon represents Rover, the guardian that chased him when he tried to escape The Village. The show started with a prologue that ended with I am not a number, I am a free man. He was number 6 and talked to Number Two and was always asking who number One was.

          2. So subversive that (allegedly) the first broadcast run was done in the wrong order and no one noticed.

          3. Not so much that no-one noticed, as that the episodes are self-contained within a story arc. As often happens with such series (Farscape also for example) episodes may get broadcast out of order for obscure programming reasons. This tends to happen most often with the first few episodes, before plot threads build up into a fixed sequence.

  6. You know, there’s a reason why we use a phonetic alphabet rather than hieroglyphics. The latter work great if you’ve got a very limited vocabulary, like road signs…but before long, you need huge amounts of detail to differentiate the one symbol from the other.

    And, really. How many people have ever even seen a cross-section cut of a tire? Whose fucking brilliant idea was it to represent the wheel not as a circle but as some sort of distorted wishbone?

    b&

          1. We have coffee-making robots…if the robots start drinking coffee, too, how long until we have combination units that only sit there and grind and brew beans solely for their own pleasure?

            And then what’ll we need people for?

            b&

    2. It took me a while to figure out what the “low tire pressure” icon in my own car was once it appeared. That’s the most obscure of today’s automotive icons, IMO.

      1. It gets worse, at least on my car. The low tire pressure icon only lets you guess which of four tires is low. You can put air in the tires but the light does not go off until you get the car going pass 20 miles an hour.

    3. There is a (possibly apocryphal) story about tractors with hare and tortoise symbols on the speed control. It made no sense to the
      locals who were unfamiliar with Aesop.

        1. I’ve never seen a lawnmower that didn’t have them. And do you really need Aesop to understand it? Tortoises and hares are widely distributed around the world and should be well known for their relative speeds.

      2. Oh come on. Tortoise=safe mode (tortoises have a shield), hare=unsafe mode (roadkill). Easy without Æsop.

    4. “And, really. How many people have ever even seen a cross-section cut of a tire?”

      But w/o that we’d never have the hilarious lyre joke!

          2. Tangent–

            Did you know that Wisconsin was thinking of changing their state motto? They toyed with “Eat Cheese or Die,” but decided instead on “Come smell our dairy air.”

  7. I am glad that I am not the only one who is baffled by some of the icons in cars.
    So, ‘silencer’ is a synonym for muffler?

    1. Me neither (symbol or caption).

      Brilliant comment on the last one though. But I’m not sure what the icon is supposed to mean –
      Your airbag is working?
      Your airbag is not working?
      Your airbag has just deployed and you now have a faceful of white powder/concussion/broken neck?

    2. I guess it’s supposed to be the girl’s eye from the horror movie “Ju-on” (Japanese original) or “The Grudge” (American remake).

  9. I find ALL these symbols cryptic and hard to understand. Also, the important ones (like oil pressure, which means something is seriously wrong) get swamped by the trivia (seatbelt, door open – stuff you should know about anyway).

    My ideal car would just have bright unmissable red lights labelled (in English) “Oil” and “Water” and smaller ones for alternator charging and fuel warning (plus the usual gauges of course). If it’s a French car it could say “Huile” and “Eau”, I don’t mind, easier to learn a couple of foreign words than try to decipher cryptic symbols that only meant something in the designer’s feverish brain.

  10. As a COBOL programmer who works on a mainframe (government motto: if it works, don’t change it), I get the same feeling about most of these icons as I do about the cryptic error/warning codes issued by the computer.

    With the computer, storage and recall are cheap enough that surely, a few words could be added so I don’t have to search the reference database to remind myself that a S0C7 deals with non-numeric data in a numeric field. Sure, if you get the error code enough times, it gets embedded, but the main goal is to avoid the errors in the first place.

    With the dashboard icons, with today’s inexpensive display technology, even the lower-end cars could easily have a simple two- or three-line LCD screen that could display pertinent information on whichever warning light is on (i.e., dripping genie lamp is glowing; tap the light, and up pops the explanation). I don’t drive, though, so I don’t know if something like this already exists (outside high-range vehicles), or it’s overall feasibility. Maybe understandable warning icons will arrive about the same time as the standardized dashboard arrangement.

    Thinking of computers and dashboard warning lights reminds me of the old(?) joke speculating what a car made by Microsoft would be like, which included a single dashboard warning, labelled “General Car Failure.” Somewhere, there’s a cheerful psychic… um… happy medium.

    1. In fact car displays and controls have been getting WORSE over the years.

      In my old ’87 Mazda, the heater / fan / air vent controls are separate sliders, I can tell instantly what they’re set to – by feel if I have to – and adjust them to what I want. And all the other knobs and switches are fixed in their proper places and you can tell if they’re on or off.

      Some new cars have push-buttons on the steering wheel (idiotic idea!) – and of course you can’t tell what the current setting is, if you’re unused to the car you don’t know how long a press of the button is needed to make the required adjustment…

      Touch-screens are even worse, since there are no buttons to give you tactile feedback and their positions change with each different menu. Great for the passenger to amuse themselves with, no damn use for a driver who should be watching where he’s going…

      I do agree, though, that a simple few-word text description of those damn icons would forestall guessing games – bearing in mind that the driver may have to interpret them while in traffic at 130kph on the autoroute…

      1. My parents’s 1955 VW Bug has near-ideal instrumentation. It has a speedometer; an odometer; a turn signal indicator; an headlight high beam indicator; and idiot lights for the generator and oil pressure.

        What it’s most notably lacking is a fuel gauge. Not a problem; we just write the mileage on a sticky on the dash when we fill the car up, and refuel every couple hundred miles or so. It’s a twelve gallon tank and the car gets about 30 mpg, so that’s plenty safe. And, if you run out, you can turn a lever with your toe to draw fuel from a lower spot in the tank and thus get an extra gallon or so — not something you want to rely on, but it’s there.

        By 1968, when VW made my own Westfalia Camper, they had added the fuel gauge…but that’s the extent of the additional instrumentation.

        b&

        1. Wow, a ’55 Bug!! I remember those weird auxiliary gas tanks in the mid60s ones. And their reverse was really strange. I remember borrowing a friend’s once when my Opel was in the garage and it taking me half an hour to figure out how to get the thing into reverse. I think you had to lift a ring around the gearshift or something??

          2. I think mine was a ’71 as well! Little red 4-door. Loved that car. Had to replace the clutch prematurely from SF hills. Drove it across the country and up to Toronto. No Opels except the sports car in Canuckland so kept having to drive to Buffalo for repairs. Gave up when it was about 10 years old.

          3. This is spooky. Mine was a red 4-door, and I had it about 10 years too! And “we” (my Opel & I) started out in Ithaca, New York, where the hills rising up from Cayuga gorge rival San Francisco’s. (That’s where I learned to drive a clutch.) “We” later lived in TX, then Boston.

          4. Quel coincadink!! I would have kept mine even longer if there hadn’t been the cross-border hassles. Such a great car to drive!
            I first drove my brother’s yellow Opel w black racing stripes ( nicknamed Dodgie, for Artful Dodger)all over Europe ( where I learned to drive standard) and then had to get one of my own when I came back to Calif.
            Remember having trouble getting out of a tight parking space on a cold winter night after a concert in Vienna. Hadn’t yet figured out the choke and the thing was idling at about 3000 rpm…
            Ach, those were the days;-)

          6. The Bug’s an awful lot of fun. I’ve actually got it right now…the Camper is getting a new distributor, and the Mustang is in pieces as the body work progresses.

            Reverse on all air-cooled VWs from the dawn of time is to press straight down with an open palm and then to pull back and towards you, as if shifting into second but with the knob an inch or so lower than its neutral position.

            b&

          7. That does sound right, Ben. Not like the Reverse on any of my other standard-transmission cars, including my ex’s VW GTI. It’s not only the pushing down that was weird, but it was the direction in which you had to pull it. Most cars you push the gear shift away for reverse, and IIRC there was no little diagram below the shift. I borrowed the car from in front of our house, but then angle parked against a curb in a parking lot. No way to go forward. I remember this as though it was yesterday. Very embarassing. Think it was at the Co-op in Berkeley.

          8. At the Berkeley Co-Op…depending on when this was, you may well have run into my grandmother there — Catherine Webb. She was active in the Co-Op and library and what-not….

            b&

        2. @Ben

          To your ‘ideal’ instrumentation I would add a tachometer (‘rev counter’), oil pressure gauge, water temperature gauge, and fuel gauge. And possibly an ammeter. With warning lights as well for the last four.
          My advocacy of getting rid of the inessential rubbish (seat belt warning light ffs!) doesn’t extend to doing without important gauges.

          In other words pretty much like this:
          https://www.flickr.com/photos/62319060@N05/5678327860/
          but with the addition of the warning lights I mentioned – good bright lights for oil and water, at that, because you can’t watch the gauges continually. The clock is optional.

          1. Depends a great deal on the car.

            VWs don’t have coolant, of course, so a water temperature gauge is meaningless — as essential as it is in water-cooled cars. And the rest of the gauges aren’t necessary in a daily driver.

            Oil pressure…either it’s going to remain basically constant, or else you’re losing oil fast and the light’s going to come on; slow leaks you should notice either from the stains on the driveway or the level dropping faster than usual when you check the dipstick.

            Tachometer…essential for performance driving, of course, but, for a daily driver, the speedometer is plenty “good enough.” The Bug, for example, you shift at 10, 25, and 40 MPH and typically limit speed to 55 with a redline at 70 and that’s all you need to know.

            Ammeter…at least in VWs, the only likely way current is going to vary meaningfully is in one of three ways. First and most likely, the belt could break, in which case the idiot light comes on and you immediately put the car in neutral and turn off the ignition and coast to the safest place to pull over. The other two…the voltage regulator could die, or the generator / alternator could die. Both eventually result in your battery not getting charged and you not being able to start the car, but with various niggling warning signs in advance…so, again, not much need for a gauge. Wouldn’t suck to have a good idea you’re not going to be able to start the car again, but those parts last longer than most Americans keep cars, so it’s not such a big deal. Yes, I’ve gone through one or two of each, but I’ve had the Camper for…probably a couple decades, now.

            I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do for the dash in the Mustang…one possibility is to keep it stock with the addition of the original dealer-option steering-column-mounted tach. Another is a more modern cluster of dials. Still time to decide.

            b&

          2. I half expected that and I will refute it point by point 🙂

            Speedo and fuel gauge are obvious.

            Tachometer – more use in a manual of course than an auto which controls the engine speed itself. Not only useful when flooring it at 6000rpm in competition; in my Mazda (which right now has no choke so needs a fair bit of warming up) it helps me to keep the right idle speed when cold. And even in normal driving, when encountering a hill, it helps to know when to change down to avoid the motor ‘slogging’. As a side benefit with many models, if the contact breaker points have closed up, the needle ‘bounces’ erratically in a distinctive fashion – a good early warning of imminent spark problems.

            The other gauges don’t really matter if everything’s all right, but they come into their own if there’s a fault.

            Water temperature – to be watched like a hawk if there’s a suspected leak or suchlike.

            Oil pressure – I have had the oil warning switch fail “on” – the oil pressure gauge told me the light was a false alarm, saving enormous inconvenience. It also gives a good indication of the general condition of the motor.

            Ammeter – very useful in diagnosing whether the alternator is working 100%, or just charging a little bit (can happen with worn brushes) in which case you will probably make it home OK, or totally defunct. I’ve had (in various cars) several alternator failures, and several battery failures. Mostly in cars without ammeters, but an ammeter would have been most informative. It’s also something that could very easily be done with modern electronics, incidentally.

          3. in my Mazda (which right now has no choke so needs a fair bit of warming up) it helps me to keep the right idle speed when cold.

            The Bug has a manual choke, but an RPM setting isn’t going to do you much good…when it’s cold, it needs to idle faster than normal or else it’ll stall. The Camper has an automatic choke that only sorta works, but resting a foot on the throttle is all it takes, and only then for the first mile.

            And even in normal driving, when encountering a hill, it helps to know when to change down to avoid the motor ‘slogging’.

            At least, in VWs, the speedometer works just fine for that. In fourth gear going up a mountain at 45 and start to loose speed? Shift to third when it drops below 40, back to fourth when you’ve got enough power to go over 40.

            And the rest…yes, useful, of course…but for problems that again don’t tend to happen for longer than most people use the car. And that generally either give plenty of other warning or are going to strand you regardless.

            I wouldn’t say the gauges are a bad thing — far from it. But they should be an option package for those who want them and know how to read them, and VW, at least, was right to leave them out. For the intended market, they aren’t just a waste, they’re added distractions and confusion.

            b&

          5. “I wouldn’t say the gauges are a bad thing — far from it. But they should be an option package for those who want them and know how to read them, and VW, at least, was right to leave them out. For the intended market, they aren’t just a waste, they’re added distractions and confusion.”

            Couldn’t agree more. Esp. when “intended market” = me.

          6. Merilee:
            “Infinite – you wear a Speedo when driving ??”

            Not being ‘Murican, no I don’t. (I think Speedos are only an item of clothing in the US of ‘Murica?)

            Umm, Google tells me otherwise but it’s not a term I approve of. So I don’t use it. When I go swimming I wear togs. (I won’t wear anything with a brand name anyway. I’m incredibly prejudiced against anything ‘advertised on TV’) 😉

          7. My Honda CRV ( standard trans) had NO tachometer, while my Honda Element (fridge on wheels, as mt daughter called it) was automatic and did have a tach. Makes no sense.

          8. It (the tachometer) seems to be regarded by manufacturers as an optional extra, to be included or not according to the stylist’s whims, or whether the car has pretences to be a ‘de luxe’ or ‘sporty’ model.

      2. I could not agree more with you, infinite! Car-makers, please give us back our buttons & knobs! I’ve been driving my current car for >10 years and I still have to take my eyes off the road to adjust the radio, and there are still functions I’ve never learned how to do on it. Thank goodness it still has buttons & a volume knob for the radio. When I rent cars, I just give up.

        1. It’s really bad when you have to start off in a rental car at night! Hard to even figure out the lights, let alone see the other knobs and buttons…

          Another beef about newer cars: I loved how in many older European and Japanese ones you could have fresh air in your face while hot air was blowing on your feet.

          1. Oh, yeah, and I always do start out at night with a rental car, it seems.

            Alas, never experienced the cars you mention in your last graf.

          3. Guess I never really noticed. Go figure.

            I’m not so interested in fresh air in my face anyway.

          4. Yes! My 1970 Mark 2 Cortina has that. It was hailed as a big advance at the time – which it was.

            I was driving the wife’s newish vehicle two days ago (summer here) and wishing I could do just that – blow fresh air in my face while warming up my feet.

            I usually solve it by driving with the window full open all the time (except in torrential rain), but my wife won’t let me if she’s in the car because of the draughts.

          5. That was @merilee of course, re ventilation.

            Re rental cars, I rented a Citroen with built-in satnav in Paris. It was some use getting onto the autoroute, but then I fiddled with a menu and screwed it up. Took me three days to find time to persevere enough to restore the display to sanity, after which I left it set to map display (north at the top) in which form it was actually useful, in conjunction with paper maps (satnav to show where we were, paper maps for the bigger picture of where we were going). I didn’t dare touch it again.

            It had another use, my wife (who normally squawks when we come to too many corners) was so fascinated watching the upcoming hairpin bends coming up on satnav then actually materialising on cue, she was happy for the rest of the trip. Satnav = passenger pacifier. I never thought of that.

          6. “..then I fiddled with a menu and screwed it up. Took me three days to find time to persevere enough to restore the display to sanity…”

            I’ve so been there. Except I almost never find the time to figure out how to fix my goof-ups. Usually just turn the display off and go without.

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