Playing Mario Kart is already challenging to many people, so imagine playing Mario Kart while drunk.
On Friday, Oct. 5, The Resident Students’ Association (RSA) hosted Mario Kart: Don’t Drink and Drive. Students were given the opportunity to play Mario Kart while wearing drunk simulation goggles.
Drunk goggles have warped lenses that impair your vision to simulate the effects of alcohol. Students put on the goggles and then attempted to play the popular racing game.
Javonne Richardson, a freshman psychology major, said that her perception of everything shifted when she put on the goggles.
“It was really blurry. The TV was right in front of me but it was sideways. I could see but it was in a totally different direction,” Richardson said.
The goggles can also alter many people’s vision, so they were unable to see how near or far upcoming obstacles were. Marvin Bartz, a junior primary education major, said that he was unable to play the game normally since his reaction speed was slowed down.
“You have to react pretty fast because you see the objects not as early as otherwise,” Bartz said.
Nina Rautenkranz said that it was hard to focus on playing the game correctly because the goggles had changed her vision so much.
“It was really strange because the whole TV was left, to the side and blurry. I think that I had my head up the whole time because I looked under. It was just really hard to concentrate,” Rautenkranz said.
Students, on average, ranked lower in the races when wearing the goggles, because of the many different ways they felt hindered by the drunk goggles. Though some students did place higher up, they all agreed that drinking and driving should never mix.
Mario Kart: Don’t Drink and Drive was originally planned for September, which is Alcohol Awareness Month, but had to be rescheduled due to complications from Hurricane Florence.
Ashley Erwin, vice president of programming for RSA, said that the purpose of this event was to bring awareness to the dangers of drunk driving.
“A lot of people, they think it’s okay to drink and drive if they’ve just had one beer or maybe even two beers. But even just one drink will affect your decision making and that’s what we want to show here. Each goggle had a different level of intolerance and that just shows that anything could affect you. That’s why we wanted to do this because attention needs to be brought to it,” Erwin said.
