1998 PONTIAC GRAND PRIX Owners Manual

@b NOTES
3-34

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
4-12
4-
14
4-15
4-16
Defensive Driving
Drunken Driving
Control of a Vehicle
Braking
Steering
Off-Road Recovery
Passing
Loss of Control
4-17 Driving at Night
4- 19
4-22
4-23
4-25
4-25
4-27
4-3 1
4-33.
Driving in Rain and on Wet Roads
City Driving
Freeway Driving
Highway Hypnosis
Hill
and Mountain Roads
Winter Driving
Loading Your Vehicle
Towing a Trailer
4-1

Defensive Driving
The best advice anyone can give about driving is:
Drive defensively.
Please
start with a very important safety device in your
Pontiac: 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 preveztable 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.
4-2

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
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
0 The drinker’s body weight
0 The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
consume the alcohol.
0 The length sf 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
(1 20 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.
4-3

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!
4-4

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.

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.
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 pat. So do alcohol, drugs and
frustration. But even in 314 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
can provide. That means you can lose control
of your vehicle.
4-6

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 (ABS)
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 or pulses 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.