Pontiac 2004 Grand Prix - Manual (Page 238)

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 1-10 .
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.
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