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Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

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Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#101

Post by n8cpdx »

Sparkle-san wrote: post #53
terminalshort wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the truth is that habitual users are always impaired. Source: former habitual user.

Got any real sources? I've been a daily user for over 10 years and also have a spotless driving record.

It depends on the level of your habitual use. A 5mg gummy every evening is probably fine.

I’ve seen plenty of people who are essentially using THC vapes like nicotine vapes, in that they use them every few hours and start to get anxious if they don’t. Stoned driving has become normalized - between seeing people lighting up behind the wheel on snap map, seeing it on TV (this happened in The Rehearsal season 1), and seeing it in person, it would take a lot to convince me otherwise.

If you’re high all day every day, that may be your normal, but it doesn’t mean you’re competent to drive.

In my personal experience, it took a very long time to fully get through a high dose of THC - usually at least a full night sleep, but sometimes more like two, before my reaction times came back. Notably, it takes much longer for the impairment of THC to wear off than the subjectively enjoyable experience of being high, so you can “sober up” but still be impaired.

If you’ve been getting high every day for 10 years, it is hard to take seriously that you would know if you’re impaired. Kind of like vegans who haven’t tasted dairy for 10 years tend not to be reliable judges of the quality of vegan mayo - how could they possibly know?

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#102

Post by loeg »

8organicbits wrote: post #44

The lack of change after legalization of recreational use is interesting. How many deaths related to medical use versus (previously illegal but decriminalized) recreational use?

I don't think the user population changes much whether it's illegal, "medical," or legal.

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#103

Post by marcinpieczka »

tokai wrote: post #13

An issue with having the legal limit at ~2-5ng/ml is that it makes habitual users be over the limit if they have smoked recently or not.[0] Making the prohibition seem unserious to some, not about safety but about punitive control, and in turn making it matter less if you smoke and drive as you are taking the risk of getting into trouble in any case. The impairments of driving under the influence of alcohol have been…

That works the same with alcohol - heavy alcoholic would probably need to be over the limit to feel ok and sober.

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#104

Post by loeg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #58
ck2 wrote: post #45

I live in a "working poor" neighborhood 50% of the people on this street get stoned before driving to work, every single day dope isn't even legal here and even if it was DUI is wildly illegal We can only cure this if we get serious about penalties because we can't undo murder and injuries How about first time warning, second time weekend in jail, third time week in jail, fourth time month in jail, fifth time year in…

> We can only cure this if we get serious about penalties Saying that in the country with world-leading mass incarceration mostly due to its decades long “war on drugs” which has very much not cured drug problems is a perfect example of putting ideological preconceptions ahead of reality.

We have world-leading criminality rates. Given that, the only alternatives are world-leading incarceration, or just letting criminals roam around making law-abiders' lives worse.

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#105

Post by bobro »

One useful point of comparison here would be the percent of the driving population overall who have some THC in their system in the same way as these researchers are measuring it. I wouldn’t guess that 40% of drivers would test positive for recent THC use, but I can’t understand the 40% number here without knowing the percent for the overall population.

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#106

Post by galleywest200 »

ck2 wrote: post #89
dragonwriter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can only cure this if we get serious about penalties Saying that in the country with world-leading mass incarceration mostly due to its decades long “war on drugs” which has very much not cured drug problems is a perfect example of putting ideological preconceptions ahead of reality.

most people who get put in jail/prison for drugs do not get a "taste" of how horrible it is and get years right off the bat for first offense that's why I proposed five steps starting with warning, weekend, then week in jail if you spend a weekend in jail and don't change your behavior from doing something wildly dangerous yet absolutely not addicting, well then proceed to a year in prison note I am not saying put pe…

WA state already has a "three strikes you are out" law (life in prison), but laws like this are racially biased and used against minorities far more.

https://www.courts.wa.gov/subsite/mjc/docs/2024/Three-strike...

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#107

Post by mrj »

walletdrainer wrote: post #55
terminalshort wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the truth is that habitual users are always impaired. Source: former habitual user.

Sure, but the problem isn’t whether or not a driver is impaired, but the degree to which they are impaired.

Well, it would be good for the rest of us on the road if people driving two tons of murder box are 0% impaired.

I'm no angel but I have gotten more diligent... I'm just reacting to "the degree". The goal has to be zero degrees of impairment when a moment of inattention can kill.

Also, my son was just hit by a driver while he was on a bike and in the bike lane. They claimed not to see him. He's fine thankfully but it's really scary to watch him ride off.

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#108

Post by markeroon »

Sparkle-san wrote: post #53
terminalshort wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the truth is that habitual users are always impaired. Source: former habitual user.

Got any real sources? I've been a daily user for over 10 years and also have a spotless driving record.

If we're doing anecdotes I'm sure there are lots of drunk drivers with spotless records.

I understand that you're taking issue with the idea of always being impaired, but the article indicates that there's a pretty clear association between having ingested THC and being in a car crash.

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#109

Post by roughly »

bko wrote: post #79
epistasis wrote: post #7

Based on the headline, I was guessing it was any amount of positivity, and may be close to the population level, but it's actually impairment levels of THC: > In a review of 246 deceased drivers, 41.9% tested positive for active THC in their blood, with an average level of 30.7 ng/mL — far exceeding most state impairment limits. Since COVID in CA, it feels like driving has become far more dangerous with much more law…

I think it's lawlessness overall. For instance, consider San Fransisco traffic citations. Went from around 11k in 2014-2015 steadily down and then fell off a cliff during covid but never recovered (around 1k in 2023). I remember the sad story of Eric Garner who was killed in 2014 while being arrested for selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island. Today, at least in NYC, you see people parked out in front of the same…

I think it’s underappreciated the degree to which police and LEO have started behaving like political actors. NYC cops decided to “strike on the job” when the city started changing its stance in the mid-2010s, and in the Bay the cops responded similarly to Prop 47 by effectively not prosecuting shoplifting and other minor crimes anymore. Similarly, the recall of Pamela Price started almost the moment she took office and was accompanied by a work slowdown by the OPD in the interest of making the crime situation look worse. There’s other examples, but effectively the police have turned lax enforcement into a tool to preclude any shifts in policing policies. I’ve got my own feelings about those policies, but when you’ve got the cops acting like a political block that gets to set policies instead of a group of city employees tasked with enforcing them, I think that should concern the rest of us.

Re: Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study

#110

Post by loeg »

xienze wrote: post #78
Arainach wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary: we should test for the actual issue (impairment) rather than an arbitrary number.

So you’re advocating that a cop makes a subjective judgement about your impairment level? I don’t see how anyone could find an issue with that.

They are doing this every day for drunk drivers already.
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