1995 BUICK REGAL Owners Manual

NOTES
ProCarManuals.com

NOTES
3-22
ProCarManuals.com

Section 4 Your Driving and the Road
Here you’ll find information about driving on different
kinds
of roads and in varying weather conditions. We’ve
also included many other useful tips on driving.
Defensive Driving
The best advice anyone can give about driving is: Drive
defensively.
Please start
with a very important safety device in your
Buick: Buckle up. (See “Safety Belts”
in the Index.)
Defensive driving really means “be ready for anything.”
On city streets, rural roads, or freeways,
it means
“always expect the unexpected.”
Assume that pedestrians or other drivers are going to be
careless and make mistakes. Anticipate what they might
do. Be ready for their mistakes.
Rear-end collisions are about the most preventable
of accidents. Yet they are common. Allow enough
following distance. It’s the best defensive driving
maneuver,
in both city and rural driving. You never
know when the vehicle
in front of you is going to brake
or turn suddenly.
4-1
ProCarManuals.com

Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is
a national tragedy. It’s the number one contributor to the
highway death toll, claiming thousands of victims every
year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs
to drive a
vehicle:
Judgment
Muscular Coordination
0 Vision
0 Attentiveness
Police records show that almost half
of all motor
vehicle-related deaths involve alcohol. In most cases,
these deaths are the result of someone who was drinking
and driving. In recent years, some 18,000 annual motor
vehicle-related deaths have been associated with the use
of alcohol, with more than
300,000 people injured.
Many adults
-- by some estimates, nearly half the adult
population
-- choose never to drink alcohol, so they
never drive after drinking. For persons under 2
1 , it’s
against the law in every U.S. state to drink alcohol.
There are good medical, psychological and
developmental reasons for these laws. The obvious
way to solve this highway safety problem
is for people never to drink alcohol and then drive. But
what
if people do? How much is “too much’’ if the
driver plans to drive? It’s a lot less than many might
think. Although
it depends on each person and situation,
here is some general information on the problem.
The Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of someone
who is drinking depends upon four things:
How much alcohol consumed
0 The drinker’s body weight
The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
The length of time it has taken the drinker to
consume
the alcohol
According to the American Medical Association, a
180-pound
(82 kg) person who drinks three 12-ounce
(355 ml) bottles of beer in an hour will end up with a
BAC of about
0.06 percent. The person would reach the
same BAC by drinking three 4-ounce
(1 20 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks
if each had 1-1/2 ounces
(45 ml) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka.
4-2
ProCarManuals.com

man of her same body weight when each has the same
number
of drinks.
It’s the amount of alcohol that counts. For example,
if
the same person drank three double martinis (3 ounces
or 90
ml of liquor each) within an hour, the person’s
BAC would be close to
0.12 percent. A person who
consumes food just before or during drinking
will have a
somewhat lower BAC level.
There is a gender difference, too. Women generally have
a lower relative percentage
of body water than men.
Since alcohol
is carried in body water, this means that a
woman generally will reach a higher BAC level than a
The law in many US. states sets the legal limit at a BAC
of
0.10 percent. In a growing number of U.S. states, and
throughout Canada, the limit is 0.08 percent.
In some
other countries it’s even lower. The BAC limit for
all
commercial drivers in the U.S. is 0.04 percent.
The BAC
will be over 0. 10 percent after three to six
drinks
(in one hour). Of course, as we’ve seen, it
depends on how much alcohol is in the drinks, and how
quickly the person drinks them.
But
the ability to drive is affected well below a BAC of
0.10 percent. Research shows that the driving skills of
many people are impaired at
a BAC approaching 0.05
percent, and that the effects are worse at night. All
drivers are impaired
at BAC levels above 0.05 percent.
Statistics show that
the chance of being in a collision
increases sharply for drivers who have
a BAC of 0.05
percent or above. A driver with a BAC level of 0.06
percent has doubled his or her chance of having
a
collision. At a BAC level of 0.10 percent, the chance of
this driver having
a collision is twelve times greater; at a
level of
0. IS percent, the chance is twenty-five times
greater!
4-3
ProCarManuals.com

The body takes about an hour to rid itself of the alcohol
in one drink. No amount of coffee or number of cold
showers will speed that up. “I’ll be careful” isn’t
the
right answer. What if there’s an emergency, a need to
take sudden action, as when a child darts into the street?
A person with even a moderate BAC might not be able
to react quickly enough to avoid the collision.
There’s something else about drinking and driving that
many people don’t know. Medical research shows that
alcohol
in a person’s system can make crash injuries
worse, especially injuries
to the brain, spinal cord or
heart. This means that when anyone who has been
drinking
-- driver or passenger -- is in a crash, that
person’s chance
of being killed or permanently disabled
is higher than
if the person had not been drinking.
4-4
ProCarManuals.com

Control of a Vehicle
You have three systems that make your vehicle go where
you want it to go. They are the brakes, the steering and
the accelerator. All three systems have to do their work
at the places where the tires meet the road.
Sometimes, as when you’re driving on snow or ice, it’s
easy to ask more of those control systems than the tires
and road can provide. That means you can lose control
of your vehicle.
Braking
Braking action involves perception time and reaction
time.
First, you have to decide to push on the brake pedal.
That’s
perception time. Then you have to bring up your
foot and do it. That’s
reaction time.
Average reaction time is about 3/4 of a second. But
that’s only an average. It might be less with one driver
and as long as two or three seconds or more with
another. Age, physical condition, alertness, coordination,
and eyesight all play a part.
So do alcohol, drugs and
frustration. But even in 3/4 of a second, a vehicle
moving at
60 mph (100 km/h) travels 66 feet (20 m).
That could be a lot of distance in an emergency,
so
keeping enough space between your vehicle and others
is important.
And,
of course, actual stopping distances vary greatly
with the surface
of the road (whether it’s pavement or
gravel); the condition of the road (wet, dry, icy); tire
tread; and the condition
of your brakes.
4-5
ProCarManuals.com

Avoid needless heavy braking. Some people drive
in spurts -- heavy acceleration followed by heavy
braking
-- rather than keeping pace with traffic. This is a
mistake. Your brakes may not have time to cool between
hard stops. Your brakes will wear out much fidster
if YOLI
do a lot of heavy braking. If you keep pace with the
traffic and allow realistic following distances, you will
eliminate a lot of unnecessary braking. That means
better braking and longer brake life.
If your engine ever stops while you’re driving, brake
normally but don’t pump your brakes. If
you do, the
pedal may get harder to push down. If your engine
stops, you will still have some power brake assist. But
you will use it when you brake. Once the power assist is
used up,
it may take longer to stop and the brake pedal
will be harder to push.
Anti-Lock Brakes (ABS)
Your Buick has an advanced electronic braking system
that will help prevent
a braking skid.
This light on the instrument
panel
will come on briefly
when you start your vehicle.
When you start your vehicle, or when
you begin to drive
away, you may hear
a momentary motor or clicking
noise. And
you may even notice that your brake pedal
moves
a little while this is going on. This is the ABS
system testing itself.
If there’s a problem with the
anti-lock brake system, the anti-lock brake system
warning light
will stay on or flash.
See ”Anti-Lock Brake System Warning Light”
in the
Index.
4-6
ProCarManuals.com