Under The Influence - The suit that makes you feel drunk

Despite years of hard-hitting campaigns against drink driving, a new survey for Ford's driving skills for life programme reveals that more than half of young people say they or their friends have driven drunk. Two thirds didn't know their drink driving limit. “I’m not completely sure, I think it's one or two units?” “To be honest I really don't know ..” “Err... to be honest I'm not sure about that.” “Oh... no.” To highlight the dangers, Ford has developed this drink-driving suit. It has goggles to reflect the impaired vision of driving drunk, earphones to reduce hearing and several joint limiters any weights to slow down reflexes and reaction time. Walking in a straight line suddenly becomes a lot harder, as do many other tasks involving simple co-ordination, including driving. “Yeah the suit does make me feel drunk. I think with the goggles, my vision is exactly how it would be if I was feeling 'out of it'. I can't see as much, it's really blurry. [Laughter] I can't see where I'm going! oh gosh... sorry Mr Cone! ... the white lines are looking really blurry and I've got a blind spot on my right eye … and I think I'm crushing the cone... .. oh I thought I was really in line!” "STOP!" “Gosh! That felt horrible -- it felt really hard to push down on the clutch and it sounded like I had run over someone!” “As you can see, Poppy was having fun with the suit, wearing the suit, obviously this is a totally different scenario. What you've got to remember drink driving is, it's a big no-no. It does have an effect on you as an individual and is a very dangerous thing to go and do” 17 to 24-year-old can try out the drink driving suit and learn additional driving skills at free events organised by Ford across Europe. For more information, check out the websites.