Red — stop now
Oil pressure
Oil pressure in the engine is below the safe level. This is not a «top it up soon» message: at low pressure the parts run almost dry.
A red lamp means you should not keep driving. Pull over, switch the engine off and sort it out there.
What to do now
- Pull over and switch the engine off at once. Every further minute costs more than a tow truck.
- Check the oil level with the dipstick on level ground.
- If the level is fine and the lamp is still on, do not restart: the cause is the pump, the sensor or the galleries, and that is not solved at the roadside.
Codes usually behind it
The lamp only says that something is wrong. The code says what exactly — read it with an adapter and look it up here.
P0520Engine oil pressure sensor circuit malfunctionP0521Oil pressure sensor — reading out of rangeP0522Oil pressure sensor — low signalP0524Engine oil pressure too low
What to read next
A lamp is not a diagnosis. The same symbol lights up for a dozen different reasons, and only the code stored in the car tells them apart.
How the app helps
CarScan reads the codes behind the lamp through an OBD-II adapter, explains them in plain words and puts them into a report you can show to a mechanic.