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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

#181

Post by reactordev »

xienze wrote: post #164
loeg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are doing this every day for drunk drivers already.

And field sobriety tests are routinely challenged in court because they aren’t objective and at best, they’re taken into consideration with other things like BAC.

my ex-girlfriend challenged this in court last year and lost. She was pulled over coming home and forced to take a field sobriety test. She was angry and was refusing, trying to explain that she just got off work. They arrested her for DUI. Called me to get the vehicle with her crying in the squad car. I bailed her out of jail for $500 two days later. Her BAC was 0.

Her attitude when asked to perform the field sobriety test was taken as a refusal and she lost her license, now with a DUI on her record.

We all like to think that these methods work, and they do most of the time, and yet there still are cases where a normal person is subjected to them and they deem them "unworthy" to pass.

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

#182

Post by dns_snek »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #166
spamizbad wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I feel like the United States could dramatically improve its road safety if it kept maybe 1-3% of its drivers off the road permanently.

the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty. In most of the country, you are completely dependent on a car to hold down a job, get groceries and pretty much anything else. In most other countries, not having a car is a mild to moderate inconvenience you can work around.

That's not a good reason. Other forms of criminality and reckless behavior don't get this kind of extreme leniency.

People shouldn't have their license taken away over 1 speeding ticket but there need to be escalating punishments that include license suspension, community service, jail time. If someone works their way through all of these and still ends up speeding then they can't be trusted to drive a vehicle on public roads.

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

#183

Post by skywhopper »

This stat beggars belief. I think the headline is phrased incorrectly, and the overall stat is misleading. The actual stat is only from dead drivers who were tested for THC.

    Researchers analyzed coroner records from
    Montgomery County in Ohio from January 2019
    to September 2024, focusing on 246 deceased
    drivers who were tested for THC following a
    fatal crash. When autopsies are performed,
    drug screening is typically part of the
    process.
The unanswered and unaddressed questions here are, how often and why were the THC tests administered? The article says that’s standard for autopsies. But how often are autopsies conducted on deceased drivers? I would be truly surprised if it’s 100%. In fact, I would expect it to happen only in cases where there was some suspicion of intoxication. In which case, this finding isn’t very surprising after all.

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

#184

Post by nobodyandproud »

reactordev wrote: post #170
nobodyandproud wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are individuals that have a high tolerance of alcohol. Thankfully society didn’t make exceptions. Eventually. I see THC taking the same, slow, tortured approach.

Sadly, I tend to agree with you. Anecdote, I'm a user, by choice, and by habit/addiction. I was first exposed to it through, oddly enough, martial arts as a young teen. The punk rock scene of the 90s didn't help much either. Both me and my ex-wife were what you would call "techno-hippies". We would smoke as much weed as we could, and I would code and she would do her thing (she was a biologist so I have no clue, some…

Right. Taxing could (and should) fund the research needed for better testing.

Also put a stop some of the bad actors and bad behaviors of growers (all night daylight…).

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

#185

Post by ModernMech »

Aurornis wrote: post #147
solumunus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also an association with having drank water and been in a car crash. This on its own can’t reasonably inform any opinions, more context is required.

> There’s also an association with having drank water and been in a car crash This is blatantly intellectually dishonest. If 100% of people drink water then it’s not surprising when 100% of people in car crashes have been drinking water. If less than 40% of the population has impairment levels of THC at any given time but 40% of deceased car crash drivers have impairment levels of THC in their blood, you can’t preten…

> If less than 40% of the population has impairment levels of THC at any given time but 40% of deceased car crash drivers have impairment levels

You're looking at two different populations in this and your other comments, drawing a false equivalence. The study is over a 6 year period, over which 103 people (40%) tested positive for THC. You're saying that because the number of people who self-reported consuming THC in the last year is 20%, that means the result of the study is eye popping and shocking because the number is 40%. But you cannot directly infer elevated risk just because a subgroup has a higher prevalence than the general population without controlling for exposure and confounders. Especially considering what we are talking about is people self-reporting they are criminals.

Moreover, fatal crashes are not randomly distributed across age groups or vehicle types, and younger people, because they are not as experienced, they drive more often, in smaller cars with fewer safety features, are more likely both to smoke THC, and die in crashes even while sober. So there's a strong sampling bias here you're not accounting for.

And this isn't downplaying the results, it's pointing out its limitations of the study and warning you not to read into it what isn't there. You seem to be shocked by the results which should cause you to dig deeper into the study. I would say the most surprising thing here is they found nothing changed before and after legalization.

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

#186

Post by bko »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #174
bko wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably some of this, but I think it's driven by district attorney not prosecuting people. We see people that have 20+ prior arrests. How many times can a cop arrest the same person and do the paperwork if he's not going to be prosecuted? I don't think people are pushing police to arrest more people. > Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police s…

> There's probably some of this, but I think it's driven by district attorney not prosecuting people. We see people that have 20+ prior arrests. How many times can a cop arrest the same person and do the paperwork if he's not going to be prosecuted? There’s plenty of desire to increase prosecution rates in American jurisdictions but little desire to raise taxes high enough to pay for lawyers, judges, courthouses, and…

> victims of petty crime are usually poor or middle-class and therefore lack the political power to meaningfully change policy

This is just not true. Most of this is organized exploiting a lenient justice system. From my original NYT article:

> Last year, 41 people were indicted in New York City in connection with a theft ring that state prosecutors said shoplifted millions of dollars worth of beauty products and luxury goods that were sold online.

The idea that these 300 people are just stealing bread to feed their families is a myth.

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

#187

Post by derriz »

There is no mention that these drivers were ONLY impaired by weed. But I can’t believe a paper would not look at the confounders. I know quite a few who are not regular smokers but will imbibe after a few beers if it’s being passed around. Also weed is popular with consumers of stimulants. Without knowing the possible confounders, this statistic tells you very little.

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

#188

Post by cortesoft »

markeroon wrote: post #108
Sparkle-san wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't we need baseline levels to see the association?

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

#189

Post by TimorousBestie »

bko wrote: post #186
TimorousBestie wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's probably some of this, but I think it's driven by district attorney not prosecuting people. We see people that have 20+ prior arrests. How many times can a cop arrest the same person and do the paperwork if he's not going to be prosecuted? There’s plenty of desire to increase prosecution rates in American jurisdictions but little desire to raise taxes high enough to pay for lawyers, judges, courthouses, and…

> victims of petty crime are usually poor or middle-class and therefore lack the political power to meaningfully change policy This is just not true. Most of this is organized exploiting a lenient justice system. From my original NYT article: > Last year, 41 people were indicted in New York City in connection with a theft ring that state prosecutors said shoplifted millions of dollars worth of beauty products and lux…

I think you misread? That sentence isn’t describing the criminals, it’s describing the victims.

Wealthy people (mostly) didn’t own the Kias and Hyundais that were stolen en masse during the early 2020’s for instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_Challenge

Targeting a wealthy person for property crime is a high-risk, high-reward scenario, but there is still the risk of enforcement. A poor person is a much softer target and law enforcement will almost certainly tell them there’s no hope of being made whole.

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

#190

Post by leptons »

loeg wrote: post #110
xienze wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They also frequently arrest people who have not had any alcohol or drugs at all for being "drunk". It happens far too often.

Just one example of many:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFuVdlKD00s

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