Why does my car pull to one side?

Answer this before anything else. A car that drifts steadily on a flat road has a tire, alignment or suspension issue. A car that tracks straight until you touch the brakes has a brake issue.

Test it where it is safe and legal: a flat, empty stretch with no crown in the road. Roads are built with a slight slope for drainage, so a mild drift to the right on a normal street is not necessarily a fault.

An underinflated tire has more rolling resistance, and the car will steer toward that side. This is the single most common cause of a mild pull and it costs nothing to rule out.

Set all four to the pressure listed on the sticker in the driver door jamb, not the number molded into the tire sidewall. That sidewall number is a maximum, not a recommendation.

If pressures are correct and the pull remains, alignment is the likely cause. It does not take a dramatic impact — potholes and curb strikes on local roads are enough, and the change happens gradually enough that most drivers adapt without noticing.

The telltale sign is tire wear. Alignment problems wear one edge of a tire noticeably faster than the rest, and a feathered edge you can feel by running a hand across the tread is a strong indicator.

This is a brake problem, and it is worth treating seriously. Usually it is a caliper that is not releasing properly on one side, or a brake hose that has degraded internally and is restricting flow.

A car that pulls under braking behaves unpredictably in an emergency stop, which is exactly when you need it most predictable. Have it looked at rather than steering around it.