Giving students a clear look at impaired driving

Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the ranks of Ofc. Nick Bonds and Sgt. Tyler Dougherty.

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Westfield HS uses ‘Drunk Busters’ goggles to educate on dangers of drunk driving

By AMY ADAMS
news@readthereporter.com

Over several weeks leading up to prom, Westfield High School (WHS) offered students the opportunity to attend one of several impaired driving awareness courses.

In the fall of 2023, WHS received a grant from the Hamilton County Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs as well as a donation from Flanner Buchanan to purchase two pedal cars and multiple sets of Drunk Busters goggles in order to provide this type of learning activity for students. Different sets of goggles simulate levels of impairment from a blood alcohol content of .06 percent all the way up to a highly intoxicated .35.

This spring marks the first time students have been invited to engage with the new equipment. Once a week in April during CORE, a 35-minute flex period, WHS students could choose to take part in a hands-on class hosted by school resource officers designed to empower students to make smart decisions.

“We’ve had around 80 kids go through it,” said MaryEdyth Malin, WHS coordinator of communications and professional development. “If you do a big session with 300 kids, you may get the message out, but we really want them to not just hear about it but to be able to have an active part.”

School Resource Officer Chad Tribbett began the session on April 25 by sharing statistics with students. Every day, 37 people are killed in impaired driving accidents – that’s one every 39 minutes. Tribbett, who graduated from WHS in 2008, said that there were several students killed in impaired driving crashes while he was in high school.

“Some of the statistics are pretty alarming,” Westfield Police Department Public Information Officer Lt. Billy Adams said. “Vehicle crashes are the number one cause of death for teenagers, and 30 percent of those are impaired driving related.”

Tribbett talked about the physical and mental effects of alcohol consumption on the body. Then students got to experience those effects for themselves as they rotated through four stations while wearing the specialized goggles, including driving pedal cars through a cone-marked course.

Sophomore Sage Knott said she wanted to try the impaired driving course since she will be getting her driver’s license soon and admitted that she had a hard time seeing the cones while trying to steer the pedal car. Senior Jesse West agreed.

“I couldn’t trust my vision,” West said. “I couldn’t trust my brain.”

Sophomore Jackson Clary said he felt like he had no balance when he tried to walk while wearing the goggles.

“I couldn’t figure out how to place my feet in front of me,” he said.

Adams, who is also the field sobriety instructor for the WPD, said some of the students experienced double vision when trying to follow a line of duct tape while wearing the goggles.

“They were seeing two lines,” Adams said. “Some chose the correct line, some didn’t. In the real world, that would mean driving in the incorrect lane. A lot of impaired drivers will straddle the centerline because it’s easier for them to focus on one instead of two.”

Adams explained to the students that skewed vision is just one small piece of how being impaired affects a person’s ability to drive.

“You think walking with these goggles is hard,” Adams said to them. “Now imagine what it does if 10 other parts of your body are being impaired at the same time.”

Senior Nae Johnson said she had put on impairment goggles before and had recently presented a report to her health class on drunk driving. However, she acknowledged that trying to do the activities while wearing the goggles was harder than she expected.

Ofc. Nick Bonds and Sgt. Tyler Dougherty talked with students like Johnson about what they were feeling as they tried to catch tennis balls and build towers out of red plastic cups, all while wearing the goggles, and they explained how alcohol intake affects depth perception and manual dexterity.

“I love that the police officers are doing this,” Malin said. “It adds a level of seriousness, even though the kids are having fun.”

Some have criticized the use of goggles like Drunk Busters, saying the kids don’t really learn important lessons about the dangers of impaired driving.

However, Clary said that the challenges he encountered while wearing the goggles will impact his decisions going forward.

“I feel like everyone should have done this,” Johnson said.

Adams described the partnership between the schools and the police as one in which they do all they can to show kids that they care about them.

“Any awareness is better than no awareness,” he said. “We hope that (these students) take this to heart, that they learn from it, and that they go out and spread the information – to save their own life, but also to save a friend.”