Athens High School students Wednesday saw firsthand how hard — and dangerous — distracted and drunk driving can be.

Students spent the day traveling to different stations presented by Alabama Department of Transportation, area law enforcement and paramedics learning the importance of driving aspects ranging from texting to drinking and driving to having contact information readily accessible on mobile phones.

Drunk driving awareness

Athens police officers rode shotgun in golf carts while the students wore “drunk goggles” or goggles that simulate a blood alcohol level slightly more than the 0.08 legal limit.

AHS senior Daniel Chamblee drove the course lined with traffic cones while wearing the goggles. As he drove at a speed just faster than a crawl, he still managed to hit two cones.

“People think it’s easier to drive drunk because they think everything is still visible but you see two or three of everything so it makes it three times harder to drive without hitting anything,” he said.

Chamblee said when he hit the two cones, it ran through his mind that they could have been other cars or worse — people.

“The people point goes through your mind because they’re harder to see than a car, especially if you’re drunk,” he said.

At another station students wore drunk goggles during the simple act of walking.

Senior Dalton Pack said it proved to be a tough feat.

“I couldn’t come close to driving with them on,” he said. “You see two of everything so it’s hard to see.”

Athens police officer Brandon Colburn said riding with the students made him somewhat nervous and it was surprising how many cones some of the students hit — some up to six.

“We tell them that cone could have been a person or an animal, like a deer,” he said. “We try to make it semi-fun but we want to get across that drinking and driving is unsafe to them and anyone else on the road.”

Colburn said the first thing he heard from most students after they put the goggles on was “Whoa” or “I can’t see anything.”

Colburn and Officer Derrick Brooks both mentioned they had much rather a person call and ask for a ride home than try to drive after drinking.

“If you’re drinking, and kids aren’t supposed to drink at all, have someone there who doesn’t drink at all,” Colburn said. “For someone who doesn’t drink much or doesn’t weigh much, one beer can affect them to the point they can’t drive.”

Brooks said it’s important to get the safe-driving message across to students, especially those heading off to college.

“I’d rather them call if they’re drinking than drive,” Brooks said. “I think I speak on behalf of all departments when I say no department wants to deal with a teenager in a wreck and have to go tell their parents.”

Colburn said the main goal of Wednesday’s events was to teach students to be aware so they stay safe.

Safe driving habits

Alabama Department of Transportation Safety Section Administrator Waymon Benifield watched students try to walk while wearing drunk goggles and then gave them information on good driving habits and the dangers of bad ones.

As he watched students in different grades, he noticed the goggles affected age groups differently and blamed their performance on the different stages of brain development.

“Their brains aren’t fully developed until age 25 and the freshmen had a harder time walking than some of the seniors,” he said. “I think a lot of that goes back to (how young their brains are),” he said.

Benifield emphasized to students the single most important thing they can do when they enter a vehicle is to wear their seat belt.

“More than 60 percent of traffic fatalities are people not wearing seat belts,” he said.

State law stipulates that anyone in the back seat of a car over the age of 15 is not required to wear a seat belt, but Benifield said ALDOT is urging lawmakers to change that rule.

“We want to get legislation passed that every teen, and passenger — but we want to start with teenagers — in the vehicle has to be buckled up,” he said. “We’ve seen situations where passengers got thrown around inside a vehicle and injured or killed themselves or others.”

Most people think a car or truck must be traveling at a moderate to high rate of speed to have a deadly crash, but Benifield said ejection from a car can happen at speeds as low as 25 to 30 mph.

Distracted driving

Students visited a trailer that allowed them to see, not just the dangers of texting and driving, but how dangerous other drivers make the roads.

Students sat behind a steering wheel, similar to a common arcade racing game, and looked at three screens — one simulating the windshield and two others simulating side windows — and tried to drive while watching for others on the road who may be intoxicated, texting or simply not paying attention to the road.

Police officer Derrick Brooks said students offered positive feedback on the simulations.

“We’re doing this to let them know what drunk driving is and to explain that there are people out there who drive like this,” he said.