1996 CHEVROLET BLAZER Owners Manual

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine NOTES
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine NOTES
3-20

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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
vehicle: 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.
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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:
0 The amount of 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-lb. (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 (120 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.
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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
man of her same body weight when each has the same
number
of drinks.
The law in many
U.S. 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 United States 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
12 times greater; at a
level
of 0.15 percent, the chance is 25 times greater!
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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.
A CAUTION:
Drinking and then driving is very dangerous. Your
reflexes, perceptions, attentiveness and judgment
can be affected by even
a small amount of alcohol.
You can have
a serious -- or even fatal -- collision
if you drive after drinking. Please don’t drink and
drive or ride with
a driver who has been drinking.
Ride home in
a cab; or if you’re with a group,
designate a driver who will not drink.
AA

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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 314 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.
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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
faster if you 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
Your vehicle has anti-lock brakes (ABS). ABS is an
advanced electronic braking system that will help
prevent a braking skid.
When
you start your engine and begin to drive away,
your anti-lock brake system will check itself.
You may
hear a momentary motor or clicking noise while this test
is going on. This
is normal.
ANTI - LOCK
If there’s a problem with the
anti-lock brake system, this
warning light will stay on. See “Anti-Lock Brake
System Warning Light” in
the Index.
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