1997 CHEVROLET SUBURBAN Owners Manual

When the cleaning cassette has been ejected, the broken
tape detection feature is active again.
After you clean the player, press and hold EJECT for
five seconds to reset the CLN indicator. The radio will
display
--- to show the indicator was reset.
Cassettes are subject to wear and
the sound quality
may degrade over time. Always make sure the cassette
tape is in good condition before you have your tape
player serviced.
Care of Your Compact Discs
Handle discs carefully. Store them in their original cases
or other protective cases and away from direct sunlight
and dust. If the surface of a disc is soiled, dampen
a
clean, soft cloth in a mild, neutral detergent solution and
clean it, wiping from the center to the edge.
Be sure never to touch the signal surface when handling
discs. Pick up discs by grasping the outer edges or the
edge of the hole and the outer edge.
Fixed Mast Antenna
The fixed mast antenna can withstand most car washes
without being damaged. If the mast should ever become
slightly bent, you can straighten it out
by hand. If the
mast is badly bent, as it might be by vandals, you should
replace it.
Check every once in
a while to be sure the mast is still
tightened to the cowl.
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&I NOTES
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b NOTES
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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.
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4- 14 Defensive Driving
Drunken Driving
Control of a Vehicle
Braking Steering
Off-Road Recovery
Passing Other Vehicles
Loss of Control
Driving Guidelines Driving
at Night
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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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.
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
Vision
Attentiveness.
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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 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
0 The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
0 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.
consume
the alcohol.
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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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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.
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.
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