Published: April 07, 2009 10:50 pm      

Safety Bug teaches students dangers of DUI

It was only one drink. Was it a beer or a shot of Jack Daniels?

Behind the wheel of a car, one drink is never just one drink.

That was the message the West Virginia Insurance Agency and the Woodrow Wilson High School cheerleaders hoped to deliver to Woodrow students Tuesday.

As part of the Erie Insurance Lookin’ Out Safety Bug program at WWHS, students drove the Safety Bug — a Volkswagen Bug designed for the Pennsylvania Driving Under the Influence Association.

PaDUI offers educational programs and materials to help fight DUI.

Students (and some faculty members) zoomed around an obstacle course in the school’s parking lot.

It wasn’t a difficult course. The only catch was that the Safety Bug simulates driving while under the influence of alcohol.

It gives sober students a feeling of how dangerous it is to drive after having even one drink.

On the WWHS course, orange cones flipped. Brakes screeched. Seatbelts strained.

“It was really out of control,” Leah Holdren, 18, said. “When you turned, the car wasn’t turning.

“It was like it was slowed down.”

Fellow cheerleader and senior Katy Colson, 17, agreed.

“You don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “You’re not as aware as you should be.

“You don’t feel like you’re in control.”

Parents can breathe easy that Mike Martin, the man who designs and builds Safety Bugs with his 5-year-old grandson, rode shotgun on every drive.

It was actually Martin who controlled the entire experience from the passenger side.

From the backseat, younger students got a taste of what it’s like to ride with someone who’s driving under the influence.

“It feels like they can’t drive for anything,” 13-year-old Perry Shumate, a WWHS cheerleader, reported.

Alyson Basconi, 14, agreed.

“I was kind of scared, but it was cool,” she said. “It was fun.”

The cheerleaders said they believe the experience will help students avoid driving while drunk or getting in a car with someone who’s been drinking, especially during the upcoming prom and graduation parties.

WWHS driver education instructor Dale Stafford urged high school students to never get in a car with someone who has been drinking and not to drive if they have had a drink.

Noting it’s best for an under-age person to choose not to drink, Stafford added that DUI is the “No. 1 killer of kids” in America now.

“More people die in one year in the U.S. from drinking and driving than died in the whole Vietnam War,” he added.

Stafford also asked that students remember to buckle up.

“Safety belts are the No. 1 thing we teach in this class,” he said. “If you have your safety belt on, at least you have the chance to survive and live for another day.”

Erie Insurance Agency on Brookshire Lane in Beckley is owned by M. Scott Johnson.

Johnson hopes to make the DUI simulator an annual event at Raleigh County high schools. A similar DUI simulator program will be available for all Raleigh schools today at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center.

The Greenbrier County Sheriff’s Department also hosted a DUI simulator program last week for Greenbrier students, according to Sheriff Jim Childers.

More information on the Safety Bug is available online at www.Padui.org.

— E-mail:

jfarrish@register-herald.com