Are You Under the Influence? by Safety Speaker John Drebinger
Yesterday, I discussed using special glasses to show how drugs or alcohol effect your performance. Another technique I have seen used has been done by local TV or radio celebrities around the Christmas and New Year’s holiday season. You might want to see if your local TV station would do this one with or for you.
The general scenario is a highway patrolman supervises two local broadcast celebrities on the air live. They take a quick test of their reaction speed, typically a light comes on and they have to push a button in response. The time it takes them to react is measured.
They then begin to drink alcohol at a certain number of drinks per hour. Such as two beers per hour or just total drinks not taking into account time. Because this is done live on the air their behavior changes are apparent to the audience. Every fifteen minutes, a new reflex test is given.
One of the most significant things I noticed was the participants believed they had no loss of reaction time while the test revealed otherwise. Proving it is not possible for someone to monitor their own level of intoxication; hence the need for a designated driver.
Even if you didn’t want to set this up on your own, you could find a video of such an experiment and make a presentation using it. Or, if you want, you could get an old copy of the TV show “WKRP in Cincinnati” in which they did an episode with this test that went wrong. It seems they had “Dr. Johnny Fever,” a DJ with a history of drug use, do the test and he actually got better with more alcohol. Obviously not based in fact, but very funny. It is from Season 1 Episode 21 Titled Fish Story it can be found by Clicking Here
If you want a safety speaker who is trained in how to make a safety message effective and entertaining, give John Drebinger a call at 209-745-9419
