Students at Averill Park High School got a first-hand look at what it would feel like to be under the influence without having to experience taking drugs or alcohol.
Ms. Nicole Freeman’s Statistics class completed a project that looked at the visual aspect of impairment and reaction time associated with it, and calculated data based on experiments. The group used 10 Drunk Buster Goggles that Ms. Freeman received through completing a STEM Research Institute Internship over the summer.
Student Assistance Counselor Kim Favro and School Resource Officer Brian Nikles assisted the class, as well.
The class used 10 different goggles, which ranged from various levels of Blood Alcohol Content to drowsiness, fatigue, cannabis impairment, ecstasy/molly/LSD impairment and drug and prescription medication impairment.
With the goggles in hand, students created 10 projects that ranged from something as simple as writing on lined paper to shooting free throws and playing cornhole. Students attended lunch and advisory periods to have fellow students participate in the experiments during the week leading up to the Junior Prom, and recorded data.
In each experiment, student performance dropped dramatically when they wore the goggles opposed to not wearing the goggles.
When students clearly could not write between the lines, Julia Zaremba and Nik Yash concluded that, “Since wearing drug impairment goggles limits one’s ability to write within the lines, one’s ability to drive within the lines on the road will also be impaired under the influence of drugs.”
In the stacking cup experiment, students wrote, “Basically, Marijuana’s visual impairment effects alone make smoking and driving extremely unsafe.”
