I get the message.

Don¹t drive drunk, guys.

Ron Rideout, an instructor at the Maryland Public Safety Education and Training Center, accompanied me in a cruiser on the Sykesville road course on Monday, Aug. 18, to see what it's like to drive drunk with a .17 to .20 blood alcohol content.

Fitted with goggles, often called "woggle goggles" (as the term "beer goggles" have now taken on another meaning in my demographic), this 24-year-old reporter with some extra padding attempted to walk to the cruiser without much luck.

Thud!

I walked right into the car, hugging the hood for dear life, but somehow made it into the driver's seat. How was I going to drive if I could barely get into the car?

A new initiative being launched by police wants men like me to think twice before grabbing the keys to get home after a few drinks.

The national campaign, called Checkpoint Strikeforce, targets males between 21 and 35 years old, as they are at the highest risk for drunken driving, and are the most difficult demographic to reach through awareness campaigns, according to State Highway Administration crash data and its Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

Maryland police will increase enforcement through the end of the year, targeting males in that age group as well as drunken drivers on rural roads.

Though guys in that age group could use a variety of reasons why they're hard to reach (sports, girls, video games), there are a few main causes.

"The younger group in that target age thinks that they're invincible, and that 'it's not really going to happen to me,'" said Liza Lemaster, spokeswoman for the State Highway Safety Office. "You have the older echelon who are very set in their ways, and if they've never been caught, that's also an issue."

And if they're in the stubborn category, that could mean addiction issues, she added.

Rideout told me to put the car into first gear and weave downhill through traffic cones. I thought the slalom went OK, as I didn't knock down any cones and was going at a decent speed. At least it felt decent; I couldn't read the speedometer.

Not so much, Rideout said. "You were going really wide around the cones," he said. "It looked like a
bow tie." Sober drivers cut closer to tthe cones, he shared.

Around the curve and up the hill, I punched the accelerator and tried to drive between two cones and stay in the lane.

I didn't hit any cones ... because I was in the other lane of traffic, where I could have posed a danger to oncoming traffic, as Rideout pointed out to me after the drive.

A July 2008 public opinion poll found the majority of the 300 men ages 21 to 35 said they are aware of the Checkpoint Strikeforce campaign and have seen police pull someone over late at night and seen patrols near clubs.

Neil Pedersen, administrator for Maryland State Highway, encourages all Marylanders to not drive drunk. Special programs will be in place for the Labor Day weekend, he said. Tipsy Taxi will provide free rides in the Baltimore metropolitan area for impaired drivers. Yellow Cab company will provide the cabs for the rides, he said.

You must be at least 21 and in a Baltimore restaurant or bar.

Call 877-963-TAXI for more information.

MWR Strategies in Virginia partnered with the non-profit Washington Regional Alcohol Program to survey people in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia about their views on drunk driving and enforcement.

Overall, that demographic answered similarly to the rest of the 21-plus age population surveyed. Where they differed from the other 500 people surveyed was notably in the questions comparing the risk of drunken driving compared to sex and sleeping with a best friend's girlfriend or wife.

Almost 10 percent more men in that demographic compared to all ages said unprotected sex during a one-night stand was riskier — which depending on the circumstances could have also been impaired by beer goggles.

---

user comments (0)