2003 PONTIAC BONNEVILLE Owners Manual

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Driving Your Vehicle
Your Driving. the Road. and Your Vehicle .......... 4-2
Defensive Driving
........................................... 4.2
Control
of a Vehicle ........................................ 4-6
Traction Control System (TCS)
......................... 4-9
Steering
...................................................... 4-11
Off-Road Recovery
....................................... 4-13
Passing
....................................................... 4-13
Loss of Control ............................................. 4-14
Driving at Night
............................................ 4-16
Driving in Rain and
on Wet Roads .................. 4-17
Drunken Driving
............................................. 4.3
Eraking ......................................................... 4-6
City
Driving .................................................. 4.20
Freeway Driving
........................................... 4-21
Before Leaving on a Long Trip
....................... 4.22
Highway Hypnosis
........................................ 4.23
Hi!! and Mountain Roads ............................... -4-24
Winter Driving
.............................................. 4-26
If You Are Stuck: In Sand, Mud, Ice or Snow ........ 4-30
Towing .......................................................... 4-32
Recreational Vehicle Towing
........................... 4-32
Loading Your Vehicle
.................................... 4-34
Towing
a Trailer ........................................... 4-36
Towing
Your Vehicle
..................................... 4-32
4-
1

Your Driving, the Road, and
Your Vehicle
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: They Are for
Everyone on page 1- 7.
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.
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
Muscular Coordination
Vision
Attentiveness.
Poiice 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, more than
16,000 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 eliminate the leading highway
safety problem is for people never to drink alcohol and
then drive. But what
if people do? How much is “too
much”
if someone 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
0 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 Ib
(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 wouia reacn ‘rile
same BAC by drinking three 4 ounce (120 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks if each had 1 - 1/22 ounces
(45 ml) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka.
4-3

I
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
0.1 2 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 an increasing number of
U.S. states, and
throughout Canada, sets the legal limit at
0.08 percent.
In some other countries, the limit is even lower. For
example, it is
0.05 percent in both France and Germany.
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.
“1’11 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 ef 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
judgement 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.
4-5

Control sf 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.
Also see Traction Control System
(TCS)
on page 4-9.
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 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 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.
4-6

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.
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 Brake System (ABS)
Your vehicle has anti-lock brakes. 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.
ANTI-
LOCK
United States
Canada
If there’s a problem with the anti-lock brake system, this
warning light will stay on. See
Anti-Lock Brake System
Warning Light
on page 3-43.
4-7