Students learn DWI lessons firsthand

Calhoun High School students got a small taste of what it's like to drive drunk last Friday, the final day of National Teen Driver Safety Week. The students suited up with bicycle helmets and special glasses that obscure users’ vision, hopped aboard one of two pedal carts and attempted to negotiate an obstacle course of orange highway cones.

The students, who were not drinking, smiled and laughed as they maneuvered slowly -- and quite awkwardly -- through the course. But the message was serious: Drinking makes you lose your sense of control, and that can lead to dire consequences if you drive.

Saul Lerner, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District director of health and driver education, and Wendy Tepfer, director of the Community Parent Center, created the program with a grant from the Nassau County Traffic Safety Board, which Legislator David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, helped to secure.

"There is a major issue with kids driving distracted, whether it's because of driving drunk, texting or just talking on the phone," Lerner said. "Kids feel invincible. We want them to know they are affected by these things."

Lerner said that the exercise was part of Calhoun's Grim Reaper Day, when students dress in black to remember young people who were injured or killed in DWI crashes. In addition to the pedal-cart course, students watched members of the North Merrick Fire Department rip off the top of a Pontiac Grand Am with the Jaws of Life to extract a woman inside and show students what an accident looks like.

"Our goal was to empower the teens to become safer drivers," Tepfer said.

The pedal-cart course will now become a regular part of Calhoun's phys. ed. curriculum. Additionally, Calhoun is required by the county to lend out the "drunk" glasses when called by other high schools, Lerner said.