Police say they can tell if you are too high to drive. Critics call it ‘utter nonsense’
Police say they can tell if you are too high to drive. Critics call it ‘utter nonsense’
Police decide who ingested exactly which drugs based on a 12-step collection of clues gathered by staring into suspects’ eyes, pinching their muscles, taking their blood pressure and watching closely how they walk and talk and balance.
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Drunk driving is a legitimate concern. High driving, despite the vilifying by police, simply doesn't have even a modest fraction of the stats to back it up. And anecdotally is not remotely the same as alcohol.
Elderly driving is the conversation we don't apparently want to have. Just because Gamgam can still get around on her own, in the house she's lived in for 40 years, does NOT make her capable of driving a two ton piece of metal.
Their reaction speed is like a drunk person. Their decision making skills, also akin to drunk people. Elderly drivers injure and/or kill pedestrians and drivers every year, and we're supposed to be OK with it because they're old? Fuck no. They should be tested every year if they still want to drive, and losing their license means losing their vehicle too.
This is yet another reason we desperately need good public transit. We all get old. Why do we have to choose between endangering other people's lives and participating in society?
Because the auto industry paid lobbyists for decades to prevent the spread of local and national rail and tram lines?
Sorry, that's kind of an oblique answer, the direct answer is money. A few extraordinarily wealthy people made a few more people rich by sacrificing what is right and good for America, with what is convenient and enriching for them. And now all our urban areas are designed for cars instead of people, which makes them shitty and inhospitable.
As a society, we would understand better, if more of us had the ability and desire to see how other industrialized nations live, but instead we just ramrod "American exceptionalism" until lil Johnny thinks his patch of Iowa, or Alabama, or Texas or wherever is equal to, or superior to anywhere else. All without ever having to leave the state, at all. I mean, what if they don't have FOOD there?
Strictly speaking, most of the American Midwest doesn't have any food at all. They grow hard unappetizing corn to feed animals and for ethanol.
Which is even more insulting because taxpayers subsidize farmers to grow that corn instead of food, and we now know that ethanol is not better for the environment, and actually contributes to greater environmental damage. But $$$.
Everyone should be tested periodically for reaction time and situational awareness. Every two years if you want to keep your license.
“Boo hoo! That means people won’t be able to drive if they don’t pass!”
GOOD.
It blows my mind how easy it is for drunk drivers to get back behind the wheel. Once someone has proven how overwhelmingly selfish and foolish they are, it's unfair to everyone else to put us in that danger.
So our solution is simply to weaken civil liberties for everyone with unreasonable searches.
Ummm, if it can fuck with your perceptions when you're high enough you shouldn't be behind the wheel of a chunk of metal going a speed. Not enough data is no justification, even if it's "not as bad". I have, and I'm sure others also, personal experiences of being high as fuck and barely being able to experience the passage of time in a coherent way, feeling like your forgetting what happened 30 seconds earlier.
Field sobriety shenanigans aside, I really hope we're not pretending like driving high is okay. Cars can kill, and you had better not be under the influence of anything that is a detriment to you driving safely.
Please, please, tell me you meant to write: "Drunk driving is a legitimate concern. High driving, despite the vilifying by police, simply doesn't have even a modest fraction of the stats to back it up. And anecdotally is not remotely the same as alcohol. But you still shouldn't drive under the influence of that either. Police should be required to administer scientifically accurate tests and acceptable blood contents be determined. Not field sobriety tests based on nothing."
Because else, yikes.
So, by the logic in your argument, police should stop and perform snap cognitive tests anytime they see someone who looks over the age of 70? Or even 60- as the medical community seems broadly in consensus that cognitive decline kicks off around that point.
So perhaps the bigger question is:
Why are you OK with having elderly drivers on the road, when we know it's only a matter of time before they aren't capable of the necessary tasks required to safely operate a vehicle, at speed, and in dynamic environments, and yet your focus is on the hypothetical potential of marijuana impaired driving?
Per my original comment: elderly driving is the conversation we are refusing to have- and to add on, it's because elderly drivers are not capable of self-regulating their behavior, and yet if elderly motor vehicle laws come to pass, the entire Baby Boomer generation would fall under the auspices of an elderly driver mandate for annual cognitive testing/licensure.
Apologies, I only took issue with downplaying being high and driving. Don't get high and drive is all I'm saying here, and think your original comment seemed like you were saying it's fine.
I'm totally with you on the elderly, you ought to need to renew you licence with a test when you get older. Because yeah, cars are deadly a f.
All good. My opinion of the average driver's competency is not charitable either. The median sober driver is still of barely-passes-muster capability and training. As an example of absurdity: to qualify for a Washington DC license, drivers are not required to perform parallel parking in the test...in a small city where a large portion of parking is exclusively parallel.
The roads will only be "safer" when our whole society has reliable, easily accessible, and low cost public transportation options. Which should essentially render roadway-centric transportation moot for the average person.
Amen to that
Here’s my anicdotal account:
I have driven high more hours than I have driven sober. I have only ever gotten a ticket or gotten in an accident when completely sober. Despite the assumptions, so far the data points towards me being a safer driver while high on a normal amount of weed.
Are there sufficient studies out there showing fewer accidents while under the influence of weed? Or negligible effect?
Else, I'm gonna have to press X to doubt, and really would rather wait on further studies before letting you think your self-reported performance is convincing.
Weed affects your cognition, I hope we can agree on this. How adversely for driving, according to dose, that I don't know. Though I don't think anyone should accept people telling you "nah, it's fine, trust me bro. I only got into an accident when I was sober!"
Cars are deadly, and you ought to be sober while operating heavy machinery.
Stop doing it until studies are done (and, they will, given how widespread it's use is legally now), but heck, pressing all sorts of X to doubt on this turning out to be true. It affects your attention. And cars are deadly, so.
You are morally obligated to err on the side of caution here.
Stop driving high, please.
Yikes. Hecking big yikes.
I didn’t intend to imply it is the case for everyone, I was just saying that has been the experience for me. Results vary.
Nearly every medication changes your cognition—even OTC antihistamines. People should make the decisions that are best for them—know thyself.
One last time, I don’t endorse this style of living for everyone, but it works for me, and you might be surprised at the sheer number of people who operate vehicles while stoned safely.
Nearly every medication changes your cognition—even OTC antihistamines.
I don't know what it's like in your country, but in mine depending on the level of impact it will say on the packet, and is illegal to drive while under the influence of any medication that impacts your ability to drive safely or operate heavy machinery.
I didn’t intend to imply it is the case for everyone
People should make the decisions that are best for them—know thyself.
One last time, I don’t endorse this style of living for everyone, but it works for me
Nah, this is not okay.
I do not accept this as a reasonable way to determine what we allow as societies in terms of vehicular safety. Someone's freedom to decide for themselves what they consider to be safe, stops at everyone else's freedom to not be run over. I very much assert what's safe should be determined with science and enforced with regulation/laws. Not by everyone personally deciding for themselves.
You might be surprised at the sheer number of people who operate vehicles while stoned safely.
Dosing aside (I'm not making claims on what level is safe). We have a very important saying in my industry: just because a safety event hasn't happened yet, isn't evidence that a practice is acceptably safe. (Paraphrased). This is literally what habitual drunk drivers who aren't that drunk when they drive tell themselves "it's fine", because they haven't had a crash and are very careful. Sure, but they're increasing the likelihood of a crash nonetheless.
There may well be people out there who have driven high without incident, my response would be 1. Let's quantify that first before allowing it, and 2. They do this without incident, so far.
I'm sure you're very careful, and don't drive too high. You may never have a serious accident. But on a societal level, that's just not an acceptable way to determine what is acceptably safe. Who are you to say that you aren't increasing the likelihood of harm to someone else?
Wanna decide everything for yourself? Go live in the middle of nowhere, away from everyone else, where your decisions won't impact others.
Don't drive high unless you can back up your claims with more than "trust me bro".
Dude do NOT drive while high you're going to fucking kill someone innocent
We knew when you advocated for driving high that you do drive high. You pothead losers are all the same.
Woah hey not all of us stoners advocate for dangerous driving. I also condemn high driving. The problem is that THC interferes with your ability to focus (at least for me). Distracted driving is dangerous driving.
Personally though, my fight is against a culture of car dependency. Better bike, bus, and rail infrastructure, combined with an investment in urbanized, high density housing would tackle this problem head on and lead to significant culture change and damage reduction, but Americans are allergic to well designed urban areas.
Personally though, my fight is against a culture of car dependency.
Amen to that. Car-centric infrastructure has so many negative effects on society and the environment that go way beyond the issue of people driving while high. Reducing car dependency addresses so many problem at once.
You don’t know me.
What do you think of this?
https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e536
Results We selected nine studies in the review and meta-analysis. Driving under the influence of cannabis was associated with a significantly increased risk of motor vehicle collisions compared with unimpaired driving (odds ratio 1.92 (95% confidence interval 1.35 to 2.73); P=0.0003); we noted heterogeneity among the individual study effects (I2=81). Collision risk estimates were higher in case-control studies (2.79 (1.23 to 6.33); P=0.01) and studies of fatal collisions (2.10 (1.31 to 3.36); P=0.002) than in culpability studies (1.65 (1.11 to 2.46); P=0.07) and studies of non-fatal collisions (1.74 (0.88 to 3.46); P=0.11).
Conclusions Acute cannabis consumption is associated with an increased risk of a motor vehicle crash, especially for fatal collisions. This information could be used as the basis for campaigns against drug impaired driving, developing regional or national policies to control acute drug use while driving, and raising public awareness.
Sci-hub link: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e536
Per your source, it states ACUTE cannabis consumption is dangerous. But the OP is using cannabis chronically which greatly impacts its effects on them.
Just like someone using an acute dose of tramadol will likely be impaired, but a person chronically on tramadol won't be impaired. We have studies on neurons that back this up - for opioids/opiates, that's orexin neurons, and for cannabis, it's endocannabinoid receptors.
I've nearly been mowed down by elderly drivers on numerous occasions. It's a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
First anecdote:
I'm convinced driving stoned is still a problem (though I understand my experiences may be an outlier);
My friend used to drive stoned regularly, and while in the car with him he failed to notice traffic lights and stop signs. These are mistakes he didn't make while sober.
Caveat: he was an inexperienced driver at the time, so he probably hadn't developed intuitive driving habits, so being stoned meant he needed to manually assess every action.
Second anecdote:
I feel that driving drunk is so bad, not necessarily because of distraction or motor control (though once sufficiently drunk, these are absolutely an issue)
I feel the most dangerous part about driving drunk is the overconfidence which comes with it. People are much more likely to take risks while drunk. Conversely, people who are stoned are paranoid, so they're locked in and focused on not looking like they're driving inebriated.
I understand, because it's so dependent on the person. I wouldn't get in a car with my mother, for instance, if she got stoned. But I'm a huge stoner, and I do it every day.
I hope when I'm too old to drive I have the good sense to quit.