Reality bites: Students receive hard lessons in drunk driving
More than a dozen Olympic High School students drove drunk on Thursday, killing numerous people and destroying everything in their paths.
Fortunately, it wasn’t reality, but a simulation exercise conducted by the Santa Monica Police Department to make students aware of the potential tragic consequences of driving drunk.
Students from Olympic’s criminal justice class donned “DUI goggles” that impaired their vision to the equivalent of having a.10 blood-alcohol limit. Seeing double and experiencing inhibited reflexes, they then attempted to drive a Big Blue Bus electric vehicle through the school parking lot. The traffic cones set up by SMPD officers represented bodies, fixed objects and vehicles, all of which were plowed down dozens of times by students.
After the driving course, the students underwent mock field sobriety tests by SMPD traffic enforcement officers.
Students had the choice to be drunk either during the day or at night, based on which goggles they wore. Participants quickly realized that driving drunk is not as easy as they might have thought.
That’s exactly the point the SMPD wanted to make. The impaired-driving skills course offers real-life experience without the real-life risks.
“It’s the closest we can get to reality for them,” said SMPD Sgt. Jay Trisler. “It’s hands on and practical.”
SMPD vice officers came to the school this past Monday and talked to students in the sober living class about alcohol-related offenses such as possession of alcohol, as well as to explain the ramifications to business owners who sell alcohol to minors. The SMPD’s vice unit uses young kids from the Police Explorers program to act as decoys and go into liquor stores and try to purchase alcohol, or ask adults to buy it for them.
More than one-third of all teen traffic fatalities involves alcohol, police said. The SMPD’s traffic collision investigator gave students a dose of that reality when he shared gruesome photos of actual scenes from alcohol-related accidents.
The program, which SMPD hopes to take to other Santa Monica schools, is funded by a state grant called “Community Education and Traffic Enforcement.” The SMPD received $100,000 to be used for educational programs, DUI checkpoints and saturation patrols, according to Trisler.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2003. Read the original PDF.