Sobering Statistics: 80 Percent Fail Holiday Sobriety Challenge at AMS
Friday, December 10 2004
Da Brat listens to instructions on a field sobriety test as part of the Holiday Sobriety Challenge at Atlanta Motor Speedway. | Amy Farris is a 27-year-old widow. She lost her husband, Keith, in a crash caused by a drunk driver 18 months ago; she and her then-2-year-old son Christopher escaped without serious injury. The man who killed her husband was released from prison yesterday.
"He gets to go home and spend the holidays with his family," Farris said. "But I’ll never see my husband again."
Farris told her story Friday to a group of celebrity participants and media assembled for Atlanta Motor Speedway’s first annual Holiday Sobriety Challenge, a controlled experiment that graphically illustrated the dangers of drinking and driving, even at levels well below the legal limit of .08-percent.
Platinum-certified rapper Da Brat, Congressman-elect Lynn Westmoreland, WSB-AM traffic guru Capt. Herb Emory, Star 94’s Jonathan Hyla and Hot 107.9’s DJ Nabs all served as celebrity participants for the first challenge.
Of the five participants, four failed at least one portion of the driving test, and all five failed at least one segment of the field sobriety test administered by GSP afterwards. All five participants were at less than .04, or half the legal limit. The participants each consumed a small amount of beer and wine (one to three glasses, depending on body weight and other factors) and then tested their driving abilities on a closed course accompanied by instructors from Xtreme Measures Teen Driving School.
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