111–120 of 281 posts
If you drive within an hour or two or three of smoking sticky buds, the risk is not reflexes or reaction time, it's getting distracted by your own thoughts, or zoning out. That can easily translate into driving through a red light. The mind wanders when stoned, which is the opposite of what you want when operating machinery.
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Police have been doing field sobriety tests that don't rely on chemical detection for a very, very long time. Examples: walk a straight line, follow the light with your eyes, close your eyes and tell me when 30 seconds have passed, stand on one leg, and so on.
Yes and they are incredibly inaccurate and rely entirely on subjective judgement from the cop's perspective. Full disclosure: I have been pulled over and arrested for "driving while ability impaired" (essentially the non-alcohol DUI) When I was going to school in upstate NY, I was pulled over as I drove my friend home. The cop thought we smelled like weed (fair enough, my friend had some on him, I was sober and not h…
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It's also not safe to drive while tired, on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs), while texting, while on the phone, while not looking at the road, with glasses (they could fall off and you'd be blind), with a heart condition, etc etc. I think it's safe to assume you drive very often with things that affect your driving. If pot is proven to not affect your driving to a measurable degree, then the…
Yes, all those things affect your ability to drive. You shouldn't text and drive, but people do it, etc. I would say being stoned is a lot worse than the other things you listed though: - When you're tired, you can have a cup of coffee and wake up a bit and regain some of that focus. You can't drink a red bull and suddenly be way less high. - If you send a text or two while driving, you're not paying attention to the…
The question becomes what's Stoned? Detectable is not a reasonable limit nor is can't stand up.
This means nothing. The big difference between alcohol and other drugs is that there is a relatively straightforward correlation between the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream and the current effect of alcohol on the brain. Somebody testing positive for marijuana may not be stoned at all. It could be they were stoned last week and tested positive. Furthermore, alcohol testing is much easier and is the only type of…
I'm on vacation in Colorado right now, and you can point out the stoned drivers. They tend to drive slow and passive, they fear the merge, and spend lots of time stopped at stop signs making sure they really are stopped and not going to crash. The impression I have is that their judgement and reactions are definitely impaired, but in a stark contrast to the invincibility and carelessness of alcohol induced drivers.
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Yes, this is a key problem with the study. THC metabolites are cleared very slowly. Testing positive indicates that you used marijuana within a week or two. It doesn't mean that you're stoned. For alcohol, a comparable test might look at long-term changes in liver biochemistry associated with alcohol consumption. In that case, there probably wouldn't be any correlation with accident rates.
Blood tests can directly measure THC. The article seems to be talking about such tests. The problem is that there is not a well established mapping between THC levels and impairment. It isn't even clear if such a mapping can be done.
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Yes and they are incredibly inaccurate and rely entirely on subjective judgement from the cop's perspective. Full disclosure: I have been pulled over and arrested for "driving while ability impaired" (essentially the non-alcohol DUI) When I was going to school in upstate NY, I was pulled over as I drove my friend home. The cop thought we smelled like weed (fair enough, my friend had some on him, I was sober and not h…
Do you think legalization will cause usage to increase? Seems to me just about anyone who would use marijuana in the first place is already using it. I don't expect an increase in consumption per capita at all.
Do not read this and think it's okay to drive high. It's not. Do not drive high. Call an uber or something. I worry that people read studies like this and suddenly justify going out and driving while impaired. Driving is an incredibly dangerous activity on its own. Doing it when you're stoned is a stupid and risky move, and comparing it to how much more dangerous drunk driving is doesn't make it less stupid. If you'v…
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It's also not safe to drive while tired, on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs), while texting, while on the phone, while not looking at the road, with glasses (they could fall off and you'd be blind), with a heart condition, etc etc. I think it's safe to assume you drive very often with things that affect your driving. If pot is proven to not affect your driving to a measurable degree, then the…
I don't really mess with cannabis any more, but I think that a lot of folks have strange ideas about how it affects people. If my only experience with the drug were the first couple of times in college where we were taking bong hits, then yeah, I can see why people would be shocked that you could drive in that state. It took a me a couple of years before I discovered that most of the folks (especially the folks in th…
True, which points to the fact that it would be useful to have a well-understood BAC-like scale for marijuana usage, especially as the drug becomes more and more legal to use.
Clearly there's a difference between having one beer and driving an hour later compared to getting behind the wheel while nearly passed-out drunk. Lots of people have a decent approximate sense of what 0.08 BAC is when it comes to alcohol consumption, but everyone who is "high" is just "high" without some sort of well-defined scale.
Do not read this and think it's okay to drive high. It's not. Do not drive high. Call an uber or something. I worry that people read studies like this and suddenly justify going out and driving while impaired. Driving is an incredibly dangerous activity on its own. Doing it when you're stoned is a stupid and risky move, and comparing it to how much more dangerous drunk driving is doesn't make it less stupid. If you'v…
It's also not safe to drive while tired, on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs), while texting, while on the phone, while not looking at the road, with glasses (they could fall off and you'd be blind), with a heart condition, etc etc. I think it's safe to assume you drive very often with things that affect your driving. If pot is proven to not affect your driving to a measurable degree, then the…
What??