Pelham students discover consequences of drunk driving

Salem Editor — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:44:00 GMT

BY DARRELL HALEN

Nick Peters was “drunk” when the vehicle he was driving knocked over an orange safety cone.

He hadn’t really been drinking. Rather, the goggles he was wearing had impaired his vision as if his blood alcohol content level was .15 – beyond the state’s legal limit.

Just hours before their attending their prom, Peters and other Pelham High students wore vision impairing goggles while driving golf carts to experience the effects of drinking on their driving ability.

During the Friday, May 8, exercise, held on school grounds, local police officers urged students to make responsible decisions when driving.

“When you guys are out and about, and have a lot of pressures and decisions to make, we’re hoping you’ll … really think twice about drinking and driving, driving without your seatbelts,” Lt. Brian McCarthy told them.

One pair of Drunk Busters impairment goggles simulated a BAC level of .08, the state’s legal limit, while the other simulated a BAC level of .15.

Each driver had to zigzag a cart through a line of cones, each cone about 5 feet apart. Next, they had to back up the cart while turning it, into a space between two lines of cones.

“It’s pretty hard,” said student Wayne Parisi. “It’s really blurry. You see double of everything.”

Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers in America, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Speeding, drinking, not wearing seatbelts and distractions, such as cell phone use, are among the contributing factors.

Local rescue workers typically stage a mock accident at the school the morning of the prom. This year, police tried a new technique with the golf carts and goggles.

By providing something interactive to the students, McCarthy said, they are more likely to retain what they’ve learned.

McCarthy, a former state trooper, has seen crash scenes where alcohol was a contributing factor, he told the students.

“It’s a reality – booze and cars kill people,” he said. And he’s seen fatal crashes where death could have been avoided had people been wearing seatbelts, he said.

“The fact of the matter is, seatbelts save lives,” said McCarthy. “I’ve seen it firsthand.”

McCarthy reminded the students that earlier in the week, an 18-year-old Salem man died when the car he was driving slammed into a tree in Atkinson. His passenger, a 16-year-old Derry girl, later died. Neither wore seatbelts and investigators believe speed was a factor.

The students rode the carts with a police officer seated next to them. Frequently, they struck a cone or failed to drive between all the spaces between cones.

“Oh, that person’s dead,” a girl remarked when another student hit a cone.

Page Maloney, 18, a senior, said the goggles made her vision blurry.

“I could never drive like that,” said Maloney after she stepped off a cart. “I’d get a DUI and get hurt.”

“It feels like my eyes are going crazy,” said Sophia Hur, another 18-year-old senior, who had trouble maneuvering her cart around a cone.

“It does feel like you’re intoxicated. If I really was drunk, that’s how’d I feel.”

Will the exercise make a difference in how students behave during prom night? Absolutely, said junior Bryan Toupin, 17, junior.

“It puts it into perspective,” he said.

The “drunk goggles” exercise was part of two days of pre-prom activities, sponsored by the school’s Peer Outreach group, to promote responsible decision-making.

As they do every year, Peer Outreach presented Grim Reaper Day the day before the prom to demonstrate the dire consequences of drug and alcohol use.

Every 15 minutes, the Grim Reaper picked a student “victim.” Each “victim” was outfitted in a black T-shirt and had their face whitened to indicate they had died. The story of how a victim “died” appeared on the victim’s locker.

One boy had been cramming for finals with friends when the group decided to drink shots of Tequila to relieve stress. He and a friend were killed when the friend drove into a bridge. A girl who survived lost her right eye and suffered brain damage.

“All of our families are devastated,” his message read. “I wish we had not gotten into that car or not even drank at all.”

Peer Outreach also arranged for Joshua Burns of Teen Challenge of New England in Manchester, a residential drug recovery program, to speak to all the students in the school’s gymnasium on the day of the prom.

Burns talked about the importance of making good decisions and how one moment can define a person’s entire life.

Pelham News : drunk driving

Pelham students discover consequences of drunk driving