The most common symptoms of bad tie rods are a wobbly steering wheel, shaking steering wheel or a steering wheel that feels loose.
You may also notice cupping of your front tires or uneven tire wear due to the vehicles wheels being out of alignment because when the tie rods go bad they will allow slack in the alignment which causes the uneven tire wear.
You might also notice a clunking noise when you turn the steering wheel.
The tie rod connects your steering linkage to your vehicles wheels which allows the vehicle to be steered and for the wheels to move back and forth.
When the tie rod on the vehicle breaks then you lose control of that wheel and then your vehicle can go out of control which can cause you to roll your vehicle or cause you to go off the road and crash.
The crash could be fatal or severely injure yourself and others in the vehicle.
So having a tie rod break is a serious thing if you're going down the highway but if you're just driving down a town street going 5 or 10 mph then you won't usually wreck the vehicle but you'll have to have the vehicle towed.
When you replace the tie rods it's best to replace all tie rods at once because if one breaks then the others will likely break next.