I got drunk at work the other day.
Forget walking a straight line: My feet jutted off in a dozen different directions.
Forget walking through a doorway: Everything looked distorted, like a fun house mirror, and I stumbled blindly into the wall.
Forget the simplest of tasks: I tried to pick up a pen but missed it by inches. I almost fell on my rear while trying to sit down.
And this question kept popping into my head — a head that was sober with eyes that were drunk: How in the world could I ever drive a car this way?
More than 500 individuals died in Pennsylvania in 2000 because some people thought they could.
But looking through the eyeholes of the Fatal Vision Goggles — my spirit of choice that day — I had a sobering realization. Alcohol really does impair your responses.
The statistics show in black and white the damage done by drunken driving.
In 2000, 51 lives were lost in 1,155 alcohol-related crashes in Westmoreland, Washington, Fayette and Greene counties. Those 51 deaths made up nearly half of this area's 105 total traffic fatalities.
Statewide, 510 people died in 14,564 alcohol-related crashes in 2000. That's about a third of the total traffic deaths for that year.
Jay Ofsanik, safety press officer for PennDOT District 12, can reel off the statistics. But those numbers can't show how it happens, how people's reactions and perceptions change when they drink.
Ofsanik hopes to change that now that his office is offering the Fatal Vision Goggles to law enforcement officers, schools and driver education programs. The goggles show people, when they are sober, what alcohol impairment is like.
"Old habits are hard to break, so we thought if we can get into schools we can break the cycle," Ofsanik said. "We've got to stop the problem before it happens."
The goggles are pretty realistic.
"It really gives the participant a sense of what it feels like," Ofsanik said.
It feels nauseating. And distorting. And scary.
The Fatal Vision kits contain six pairs of goggles, along with materials such as videotapes, handouts geared toward children, teens and adults, and a guide to activities people can do while wearing the goggles.
Shoot a basket. Walk a straight line. Stand on one leg.
"Here are the normal, everyday things you can do when you're sober but when you're drunk you can't do that function like you could before," Ofsanik said.
There are goggles for daylight and shaded goggles that simulate nighttime conditions. Each pair represents a different level of impairment. Those with a bronze label simulate someone with a 0.07 to 0.10 blood alcohol level. The silver label goggles make you feel like your blood alcohol level is between 0.17 and 0.20.
I tried on the goggles at work one day, feeling a little like Alice peering through the looking-glass.
I put them on while sitting down. Staring at my hand, it seemed almost detached from my body. It was there, but it was so far away.
Ofsanik said the goggles give people a good sense of the physical impairment of alcohol — while they are sober enough to understand the consequences.
"(When people are drunk they think) 'I think I can work past it,'" Ofsanik said. "But you can't."
Standing up, I looked at the doorway. It seemed bent and misshapen. Trying to walk through it, I bumped into the wall.
I couldn't walk a straight line. My steps were hesitant. I stumbled. I felt like I could tumble down a spiral staircase nearby.
When I reached for things, I was off by just a little bit.
"Going 30 miles an hour down the highway, you're off just a little bit," Ofsanik reminded me.
My eyes, my perception, my link to the world was shattered. Yet my mind was sober. Only my physical world was impaired.
"You want people to think about it," Ofsanik said. "You want them to think about how they feel."
I tried another experiment. With the goggles on, I walked through the front doors of our office and into the parking lot, toward Ofsanik's car about 25 yards away.
I staggered to the right as Ofsanik carefully watched and tried to guide me back on track. I almost walked into the side of a parked SUV — but I didn't notice until Ofsanik told me so.
I managed to open the door to his car, but as I tried to sit, I almost missed the seat. The sound of stunned laughter poured from my lips.
He drove.
"Can you see that turn ahead?" he asked me.
"I can see it, but I wouldn't know when to turn," I told him.
And it was true. My perception was so skewed that there would be no chance I would turn at the right time.
We went back to the office, and I took off the goggles.
As I walked back inside, a receptionist asked what I'd been doing.
So I explained the goggles, and she proved that they did work.
"Someone asked me what you were doing and I said, 'I don't know, but she looks drunk,'" she said.
If other people could see what I saw that day, they might think twice about driving drunk.
And maybe others would be spared the same fate as those 510 people killed in 2000.
Anyone interested in borrowing the Fatal Vision Goggles Kit may contact Jay Ofsanik, safety press officer for PennDOT District 12, at 724-439-7135.
