1998 CADILLAC CATERA Owners Manual

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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.
I NOTICE:
Do not try to clear frost or other material from
the inside of the rear window with a razor blade
or anything else that is sharp. This may damage
the rear defogger grid and affect your radio’s
ability to pick up stations clearly. The repairs
wouldn’t be covered by your warranty.
Care of Your Compact Disc Player
The use of CD lens cleaner discs is not advised, due to
the risk of contaminating the lens of the
CD optics with
lubricants internal to the
CD mechanism.
Heated Backlite Antenna
Your AM-EM antenna is integrated with your rear
window defogger, located in the rear window. Be sure
that the inside surface of the rear window is
not
scratched and that the lines on the glass are not
damaged.
If the inside surface is damaged, it could
interfere with radio reception. If,
when you
turn on your rear window defogger, you
hear static on your radio station, it could mean that a
defogger grid line
has been damaged. If this is true, the
grid line must be repaired.
If you choose to add
a cellular telephone to your vehicle,
and the antenna needs to be attached to the glass, be
sure that you do not damage the grid lines for the
AM-FM antenna.

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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.
4-2
4-3
4-6
4-6
4-7 4- 10
4- 12
4- 12
4-13
4-
15
Defensive Driving
Drunken Driving
Control of a Vehicle
Braking
Anti-Lock Brakes (ABS)
Steering
Off-Road Recovery
Passing
Loss of Control
Driving at Night 4- 16
4-19
4-20
4-2
1
4-22 4-22
4-24
4-28
4-30 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

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine Defensive Driving
The best advice anyone can give about driving is:
Drive defensively.
Please start with a very important safety device in your
Catera: 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 rnight
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.
Defensive driving requires that a driver concentrate on the driving task. Anything that distracts from the
driving task
-- such as concentrating on a cellular
telephone call, reading, or reaching for something on
the floor
-- makes proper defensive driving more
difficult and can even cause a collision, with resulting
injury. Ask a passenger to help do things like this, or
pull off the road in
a safe place to do them yourself.
These simple defensive driving techniques could save your life.

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
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, over 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 21,
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
The drinker’s body weight
0 The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
consume the alcohol.
The length of time it has taken the drinker to
4-3

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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. 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.
4-4
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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!
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 akohol. 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.