1997 CADILLAC ELDORADO Owners Manual

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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.
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Defensive Driving Drunken Driving
Control
of a Vehicle
Braking
Steering
Off-Road Recovery
Passing
Loss of Control
Driving at Night
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4-22
4-23
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4-24
4-26
4-30
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Driving in Rain and on Wet Roads
City Driving
Freeway Driving
Before Leaving
on a Long Trip
Highway Hypnosis
Hill and Mountain
Roads
Winter Driving
Loading
Your Vehicle
Towing
a Trailer

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efensive
The best advice anyone can give about driving is:
Drive defensively.
Please start
with a very important safety device in your
Cadillac: 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.

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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
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 17,000 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 lzw 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 dpinlung 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
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 0.86 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- U2 ounces
(45 ml) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka.

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 d 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 US. 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. AB1
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!

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 hlled or permanently disabled
is higher than if the person had not been drinking.
Drinking and then driving is very dangerous.
Your reflexes, perceptions, attentiveness and
judgment can be affected by even a small amount
of alcohol. YQU can have a serious -- or even
fatal
-- colllision if YOU drive after drinking.
Please don’t drink and drive or ride with a driver
o has been drinking. Wide home in a cab; OF if
you’re with
a group, designate a driver who will
not drink.

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine raking
.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. 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; the condition
of your brakes; the weight of the
vehicle and the amount
of brake force applied.
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 c.an provide. That
means you can lose control
of your vehicle.

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. 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, and you may even notice that your brake
pedal moves a little. 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