Students at two Commonwealth Campuses will have the opportunity to legally experience drunken driving from a different perspective.

The car will certainly be drunk — not the driver.

The Safety Bug, appearing today on the DuBois campus, is a 1999 Volkswagen Beetle that has been engineered to simulate the effect a blood-alcohol concentration of .10 — the lowest level at which a driver can legally drink and be convicted of driving under the influence in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania — has on a driver.

A trained operator in the front seat controls settings that vary the car's steering and braking responses, so participants realize what it feels like to drive while under the influence.

Passengers in the back seat also experience a feeling of vulnerability that may come from putting their lives in the hands of an impaired driver.

Upon completing the road test, the driver will be given a field sobriety test wearing a pair of impairment goggles that will simulate the vision of a legally-intoxicated person.

The program is co-sponsored by the Penn State DuBois Partnership for Prevention and the school's Boost Alcohol Consciousness Concerning the Health of University Students chapter (BACCHUS).

The Partnership for Prevention is an alliance between the campus and the community that seeks to raise public awareness about alcohol abuse, and BACCHUS is a group of peer educators that advocates responsible alcohol use.

Rebecca Pennington, the campus Student Life coordinator, anticipates the event to be useful in showing students the effects of driving while intoxicated.

"We have a lot of students in BACCHUS who are excited about it.

"It's about 20 students, and 20 is a lot for DuBois," she said.

Students from DuBois Area High School will also take part in the program, as an activity with the upcoming prom season in mind.

The Safety Bug program is sponsored statewide by the Pennsylvania Driving Under the Influence Association and the Pennsylvania Students Against Destructive Decisions and appears at campuses throughout the commonwealth.

Heath Bailey, assistant to the director of student affairs at Penn State New Kensington, expects the Safety Bug's visit to campus on April 2 to be a productive one.

"I hope they realize the position drunk drivers put themselves in when driving drunk," he said.

With another week until the Safety Bug comes to campus, Bailey sees interest building.

"A lot of students are asking questions and are thrilled that it is coming," he said about the impending arrival of the car. "Everybody's excited."