Liz Follis climbed out of a golf cart she'd been driving on an obstacle course and pulled off the "fatal vision" goggles she was wearing, which gave her the physical sensation of someone who was intoxicated.
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With the goggles on, she'd had to reach out to find the golf cart to get in it, had forgotten which pedal was the gas, and nicked several small, bright orange cones with a rear wheel.
Drunk driving is the worst thing you can do. This makes me never want to drink and drive because if I hit a cone with a golf cart, I don't want to see what I could do in my car. - Liz Follis, senior at Washington Township High School
"When you're driving a real car and you're sober, you're aware of everything around you," said Follis, 18, a senior at Washington Township High School, adding the goggles erased all of those perceptions. "Drunk driving is the worst thing you can do. This makes me never want to drink and drive because if I hit a cone with a golf cart, I don't want to see what I could do in my car."
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And that was the point of the exercise Friday morning, offered through Porter County's Drunk Driving Task Force. The program, which also included shooting baskets and playing corn hole while wearing the goggles, has been offered about seven years. This year, it also includes stops for juniors and seniors at Hebron, Kouts, Wheeler, Morgan Township and Boone Grove high schools.
Seven people died in accidents involving intoxicated drivers in Porter County last year, Larry LaFlower, president of the task force and public information officer for the Porter County Sheriff's Department, told the Washington Township students, and five of them were "innocent people who lost their lives because of a drunk driver."
The goggles the students wore were marked with a blood alcohol content level, or BAC, to give the students an idea of how their perceptions would change the more intoxicated they were. The legal limit for a driver's BAC is .08 if they are 21 or older; one set of goggles was for a BAC of 1.2 to 1.5 and the other was 1.9 to 2.0.
"With the time of the year – prom and graduation parties and kids graduating – it seems appropriate to educate them, to prepare them so they make good choices," said Sue Lipinski, Washington Township's assistant principal. "As a parent and an educator, it's a little bit of a scary time of year. We know students think they're invincible."
The program also includes officers from various police departments interacting with students, which was nice, she added.
Over at the baskets, Brenden Wood, 18, a senior, muttered before he tried to shoot a basket wearing a set of the goggles. "I can't even dribble it," he said as his friends looked on and he ultimately missed.
The goggles, he said, threw him off. He thought he was shooting straight, but he was off to the right. "It shows the reality of it," he added.
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With the goggles on, she'd had to reach out to find the golf cart to get in it, had forgotten which pedal was the gas, and nicked several small, bright orange cones with a rear wheel.
Drunk driving is the worst thing you can do. This makes me never want to drink and drive because if I hit a cone with a golf cart, I don't want to see what I could do in my car. - Liz Follis, senior at Washington Township High School
"When you're driving a real car and you're sober, you're aware of everything around you," said Follis, 18, a senior at Washington Township High School, adding the goggles erased all of those perceptions. "Drunk driving is the worst thing you can do. This makes me never want to drink and drive because if I hit a cone with a golf cart, I don't want to see what I could do in my car."
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And that was the point of the exercise Friday morning, offered through Porter County's Drunk Driving Task Force. The program, which also included shooting baskets and playing corn hole while wearing the goggles, has been offered about seven years. This year, it also includes stops for juniors and seniors at Hebron, Kouts, Wheeler, Morgan Township and Boone Grove high schools.
Seven people died in accidents involving intoxicated drivers in Porter County last year, Larry LaFlower, president of the task force and public information officer for the Porter County Sheriff's Department, told the Washington Township students, and five of them were "innocent people who lost their lives because of a drunk driver."
The goggles the students wore were marked with a blood alcohol content level, or BAC, to give the students an idea of how their perceptions would change the more intoxicated they were. The legal limit for a driver's BAC is .08 if they are 21 or older; one set of goggles was for a BAC of 1.2 to 1.5 and the other was 1.9 to 2.0.
"With the time of the year – prom and graduation parties and kids graduating – it seems appropriate to educate them, to prepare them so they make good choices," said Sue Lipinski, Washington Township's assistant principal. "As a parent and an educator, it's a little bit of a scary time of year. We know students think they're invincible."
The program also includes officers from various police departments interacting with students, which was nice, she added.
Over at the baskets, Brenden Wood, 18, a senior, muttered before he tried to shoot a basket wearing a set of the goggles. "I can't even dribble it," he said as his friends looked on and he ultimately missed.
The goggles, he said, threw him off. He thought he was shooting straight, but he was off to the right. "It shows the reality of it," he added.
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