PONTIAC BONNEVILLE 1997 Owners Manual

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 fender.
Power Antenna Mast Care
Your power antenna will look its best and work well
if it’s cleaned from time to time. To clean the
antenna mast:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Turn on the ignition and radio to raise the antenna.
Dampen a clean cloth with mineral spirits or
equivalent solvent.
Wipe the cloth over the mast sections, removing
any dirt.
Wipe dry with a clean cloth.
Make the antenna go
up and down by turning the
radio or ignition
off and on,
Repeat if necessary.
NOTICE:
~~ ~
Don’t lubricate the power antenna. Lubrication
could damage it.
NOTICE:
Before entering an automatic car wash, turn off
your radio to make the power antenna go down.
This will prevent the mast from possibly getting
damaged.
If the antenna does not go down when
you turn the radio off, it may be damaged or
need to be cleaned. In either case, lower the
antenna
by hand by carefully pressing the
antenna down.
If the mast portion of your antenna is damaged, you can
easily replace it. See your dealer for
a replacement kit
and
follow the instructions in the kit.
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6 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.
4-2 Defensive Driving 4-18
Driving in Rain and on Wet Roads
4-3 Drunken Driving 4-2
1 City
Driving
4-6 Control
of a Vehicle
4-6 Braking 4-22
Freeway Driving
4-23 Before Leaving on a Long Trip
4-
10 Steering 4-24
Highway Hypnosis
4-13 Off-Road Recovery
4-30
Loading Your Vehicle 4-15 Loss of Control
4-26 Winter Driving
4-13 Passing 4-24
Hill and Mountain Roads
4- 16 Driving at Night 4-32
Towing a Trailer
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Defensive Driving
The best advic’e 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 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.
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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:
0 Judgment
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, 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 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:
The amount of alcohol consumed
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
numb’er 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 dm, 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 OJO 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
drinlung
-- 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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Control of a Vehicle
You have thee systems that make your vehicle go where
you want it to go. They are the brakes, the steering and
the aclcelerator.
All three systems have to do their work
at the places where the tires meet the xoad.
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.
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 Wh) 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.
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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 pus’h 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 a little. This is normal.
ANTILOCK (e)
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.
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