“I seen more cones that I thought were actually there,” Gaines said. “I don’t think I could really drive like that.”
Donning special “beer goggles” designed to simulate the visual effects of drinking too much alcohol, Gaines saddled up behind the wheel of an all-terrain vehicle, with Duluth Police Department Master Patrol Officer Scott Parrish riding shotgun, and attempted to maneuver through a course of traffic cones.
Gaines was one of hundreds of Worth County High School students who got to interact with public safety officials Thursday during Operation Drive-Smart, a statewide initiative designed to educate teen drivers about the dangers of impaired driving.
“Our hope is to speak with these teens and expose them to potentially dangerous driving behaviors in a way that will hopefully make them think twice before driving impaired or driving without using a seatbelt,” Duluth Police Department Master Patrol Officer Liz Strickland said.
The DPD joined forces with local public safety agencies, including Worth Fire and Rescue and the Sylvester Police Department, to organize the expo.
“Thanks to a grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, we’ve been able to travel around the state and conduct these expos along with local agencies,” Strickland said.
At the controls of a rollover-crash simulator, Strickland and other officers showed teens what can happen when they flip in a vehicle and aren’t wearing seatbelts.
“A lot of times we get a reaction from teens that they’re safe so long as they’re wearing their seatbelts,” Strickland told a group of students. “But people forget about passengers in their vehicles or large loose objects that can turn into projectiles during a crash and kill or injure the driver.”
Officer Kevin Griffith, a K-9 handler with the Sylvester Police Department, said that he thought the expo was received well by students, who were mostly attentive to the information he was presenting.
“As always, you’ll have a couple of people who aren’t really interested, but overall, most of the students are curious about what we do,” he said.
Griffith said public events like the expo help police and other public safety units show a more friendly side that he says the public doesn’t often associate with law enforcement personnel.
“People, especially teens, can get this image of police as being the bad guy because we may arrest a relative or give them a ticket,” he said. “This is one way we can kind of show them that we’re human too, and get that side out there so that if we ever do have to come into contact with them out on the road, they’ll at least have a better appreciation or opinion of us.”