I think one of the problems is that it's much harder than it used to be to know which lights are important and which are not.
I know in my manual when you look up various lights/warnings it often says "contact your dealer" so doesn't even tell you what the specific light is related to, and it's very hard to know whether it's a "stop right there, do not attempt to drive at all until it's been checked" and which are "get it checked as soon as you can and drive with a little more care than usual in the mean time"
I'm lucky that the garage which looks after my car are very good, and so I can phone them to say "this light has some on, this is what I was doing, is it safe for me to drive it straight to you now / wait and make an appointment to pop in next week or do I need to call the RAC now? Becuase the guidance in the instruction manual does not give any clue as to which of those is likely to apply
I once hired a van, to move house. We were about 20 minutes into our 5 hour journey when the engine management light came on. You know, one of the ones where the manual says "Stop. Do not pass go. Do not attempt to collect $200. Call out a tow truck"
Turned out that it was a faulty connection to the bulb of the warning light . (the bit which infuriated me was that (a) several of the guys at the hire co. KNEW this, but didn't bother to mention it to us when we picked up the van (b) the company were angry that I wasn't willing to just drive off in the hope that the engine wasn't about to seize up & leave me and all my worldly goods stranded half way across the country (this was before they checked it and found it was a loose connection, of spoke to the guys that knew that)
Fortunately it came on when we were close to another of their locations, so we got them to check it. The guy who checked it seemed bemused that I insisted on his making and signing a note to say he had checked it, it was a faulty connection not a fault with the engine, and that he was instructing us to ignore it. Did I not believe him?
(Why yes, I had read the small print of the hire agreement about what circumstances would mean we were liable for any damage to the van:-)