Day two of National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week, themed “Boggle your mind,” focused on understanding the effects of alcohol. PIER 21 put students through games that showed the effects of alcohol and taught safe drinking on Tuesday.
Students wore “beer” goggles or “fatal vision” goggles to control an RC car through a test track or when trying to walk a straight line. The goggles simulated the vision of a person between 0.07 and 0.1 blood alcohol content (BAC), which is within and above the legal limit of 0.08 in the state of Florida.
The test track was used to simulate impaired driving with the goggles on. Although driving the RC car was challenging under any circumstance, students were crashing into cones and barely making it halfway through the track with the goggles on. Students wobbled off the straight line test and were confounded to see how far off they actually were.
“The walk was harder than I thought. I thought I was on the line and then when I took off the goggles I was way off,” said junior Nicole Gonzalez.
Students were then asked to pour water into three distinct glasses: a shot glass, a beer jug, and a wine glass, and then compared each glass to the standard measurement. The standards being, according to the PEIR 21 staff, a five ounce glass of wine, a 12 ounce beer and 1 ½ ounce shot. Students were surprised by how much more they poured, especially for the shot glass.
After the games, students were asked to complete a survey about alcohol awareness and sign a pledge banner that said: “I pledge to always take a cab, Uber, Ibis ride, bus, or train, or to have or to be designated a sober driver.”