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Two bright orange traffic cones got caught under the cart and brought it to a halt on the high school track.

"You didn't see that at all?" inquired police School Resource Officer Robert Hale, a passenger in the cart.

"How does it make you feel running over everybody on the street?" police School Resource Officer Robert Ramos yelled out.

When Stewart continued to drive, Ramos threw a basketball in front of the cart, but Stewart stopped short to avoid hitting it.

"It's definitely scary," Stewart said after completing the course, adding that the goggles did give the feeling of intoxication. "You don't expect it to be that dramatic. With an exercise like this you see the effects," he said. "Before, you might take it with a grain of salt, but this gives it more weight."

Stewart was one of the participants in an exercise dubbed "Fatal Vision" held for 79 sophomores, juniors and seniors in Robert Westwater's law class.

The students drove with Hale and Ramos around the course - first, without the goggles, then two more times with the goggles, which simulated varying states of intoxication.

The purpose of the exercise was to raise awareness about the consequences of drinking and driving before students attend graduation parties, Westwater and Hale said.

Westwater said he lectured the students last week about Melanie's Law, the new tough, drinking and driving law that raises penalties for drunken drivers.

The Fatal Vision program is practical approach that gives students a first hand and safe lesson about drinking and driving, Westwater said.

Without the goggles, the students drove faster without hitting the cones. With them, like actual drunken drivers, they slowed down and were hazards on the course.

The students said the lesson will deter them from getting behind the wheel of a car after drinking alcohol.

"I couldn't do it in a golf cart, so I couldn't do it in a car - wouldn't have the guts to do it in a car," senior Jen Foley said.

Junior Joe Monast, who got his driver's license Wednesday, said the goggles blurred the lines in the track and made it hard to get his bearings. "Your vision - it was moving side to side. The lines on the track were moving too," Monast said.

"I've never done it before, and I don't plan on it," senior Kim Krzywonos said of drinking and driving.

There were 442 traffic fatalities in Massachusetts in 2005, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Of those, 171 were alcohol-related.

"We're trying to teach them from getting behind the wheel intoxicated," said Hale, a veteran police officer who has investigated several drunken driving accidents. "Going to someone's house to tell them their loved one died is very hard."