1993 Chevrolet Lumina Owner's Manual - Page 124

Your Driving and the Road i Defensive Driving The best advice anyone give about can driving is: Drive defensively. Please start with a very important safety device in your Chevrolet: Buckle up. (See the Index under Safety Belts.) Defensive driving really means "be ready for anything."On city streets, rural roads, or freeways,it means "always expectthe 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. Expect childrento dash out from behind parked cars, often followed by other children. Expectoccupants in parked cars to open doorsinto traffic. Watch for movementin parked carssomeone may be about to open a door. I22 Expect other drivers to run stop signs when you are on a through street. Be ready to bralte if necessary as you go through intersections. You may not have to use the brake, but if you do, you will be ready. If you're driving through shopping a center parking lot where there are wellmarked lanes, directionalarrows, and designated parkingareas, expect some drivers to ignore all these markings and dash straight toward one part the lot. of Pedestrians canbe careless. Watch for to them. In general, you must give way pedestrians evenif you know you have the right of way. Rear-end collisionsare about the most preventable of accidents. Yet they are common. Allow enough following distance. It's the best defensive driving maneuver, in both city andrural driving. You never know when the vehicle in front of you is goingto brake or turn suddenly. Here's a final bitof information about defensive driving. The most dangerous the time for driving in U.S. is very early on Sunday morning. fact, GM In Research studies show that themost and the least dangerous times for driving, every week, fall thesame on day. That day is Sunday. The most dangerous time is Sunday froma.m. 3 to 4 a.m. The safest time Sunday from is 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Drivingthe same distance on a Sunday at 3 a.m. isn'tjust a little more dangerousthan it is at 10 a.m. It's about 134 times more dangerous! That leads to thenext section.