1996 CHEVROLET CAVALIER Owners Manual

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine NOTES
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine NOTES
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 0 Section 4 Your Driving and the Road
I
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
Chevrolet: 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
0 Muscular Coordination
Vision
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:
The amount of alcohol consumed
The drinker’s body weight
The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
consume the alcohol.
The length of time it has taken the drinker to
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.
4-4

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 &Id
reaction time.
First, you have to decide to push on the brake pedal.
That’s
perception time. Then you have to bring up
vour 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 h/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, or when you 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, and you may even notice that your
brake pedal moves a little. This is normal.
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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