CADILLAC SEVILLE 1995 4.G Owners Manual

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YOUR DRIVING AND THE ROAD
SECTION 4. 7
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine DEFENSIVE DRWTNG
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.
DRUNICEN DMNG
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:
0 Judgment
Muscular Coordination
Vision
0 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 18,000 annual motor
vehicle-related deaths have been associated with the use of alcohol, with
more than
300,000 people injured.

Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine 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 How much 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 consume the alcohol
According to the American Medical Association, a 180-pound (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.
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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 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 U.S. 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.
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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 twelve times
greater; at a level of
0.15 percent, the chance is twenty-five 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.
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine CONTROL OFA VEHICLE 7
You have three systems that make your vehicle go where you want it to go. cd
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.
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine Braking action involves perception time and reaction time.
First,
you have to decide to push on the brake pedal. That’sperception
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.
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; and the condition
of your brakes.
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.
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine Anti-Lock Brakes (ABS)
Your Cadillac has an advanced electronic braking system that will help
prevent a braking skid.
ANTI-
LOCK (0 ABS)
This light on the instrument panel will come on briefly when you start
your vehicle.
When you start your vehicle and begin to drive away, you may hear a
momentary motor or clicking noise.
And you may even notice that your
brake pedal moves a little while this is going on. This is the
ABS system
testing itself.
If there’s a problem with the anti-lock brake system, the
anti-lock brake system warning light will stay on.
See “Anti-Lock Brake System Warning Light” in the Index.
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Downloaded from www.Manualslib.com manuals search engine Here’s how anti-lock works. Let’s say the road is wet. You’re driving
safely. Suddenly an animal jumps out
in front of you.
You slam on the brakes. Here’s what happens with
ABS.
A computer senses that wheels are slowing down. If one of the wheels is
about to stop rolling, the computer
will separately work the brakes at each
front wheel and at the rear wheels.
The anti-lock system can change the brake pressure faster than any driver
could.
The computer is programmed to make the most of available tire
and road conditions.