1994 Oldsmobile Achieva Owner's Manual - Page 126

Your Driving and the Road Defeptsive Driving The best advice anyone can give about driving is: Drive defensively. Please start with a very important safety device in your Oldsmobile: 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'sthe 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. Just how much alcohol is too much if a person plans to drive? Ideally, no one Death and injury associated with should drink alcohol and thendrive. drinking and driving is a national But if one does, then what's "too tragedy. It's the number one contributor much"? It can be a lot less than many to thehighway death toll, claiming might think. Although it depends on thousands of victims every year. each person and situation, here is some Alcohol takes away three things that general information on theproblem. anyone needs to drive a vehicle: The Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of Judgment someone who is drinking depends upon Muscular Coordination four things: Vision How much alcohol is in the drink. Police records show that almost half of The drinker'sbody weight. all motor vehicle-related deaths involve The amount of food that is consumed alcohol - a driver, a passenger or before and during drinking. someone else, such as a pedestrian, had The length of time it has taken the been drinking. In most cases, these drinker to consume the alcohol. deaths are the result of someone who was drinking and driving. About 20,000 motor vehicle-related deaths occur each year because of alcohol, and thousands of people are injured. Drunken Driving 124