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Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

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Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#231

Post by nostrebored »

MAGZine wrote: post #211
nostrebored wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stimulants have been shown to decrease your risk of accidents multiple times. Cannabis on the other hand has been shown to impair you ability to react, pay attention to multiple tasks, your metacognition... There's a huge difference here. If you drive frequently, maybe cannabis isn't a good idea for you to take to manage your anxiety, depression, or seizure control. If there's not a drug out there that helps you that…

> Driving is not a right, driving is not something everyone should be able to do. I think I would be a sub par driver, and so I don't drive. I pay more money to live in the city close to public transit. I don't say "it will probably be ok" and endanger other drivers, and this would be especially true if I actually needed pot to function. While it is true that driving is not a right, this is an extremely narrow view.…

If your lifestyle makes you a danger to others, then you need to change your lifestyle. If that implies moving to a large city, then that trumps your desire to remain in a small municipality.

I think that many people are sub-par drivers, and that's why you see the horrible rates of accidents that you do today.

The point is not penalizing the behavior after it's happened, it's deterring it before it does. Informed legislation already has a situation like this -- we don't care if alcoholics have a blood alcohol of .09 and can obviously function, if they're above that level of impairment, then they are arrested for driving under the influence. It's better to be too restrictive than to lenient when it comes to potential manslaughter.

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#232

Post by gnaritas »

rudolf0 wrote: post #64
curiousgeorgio wrote: post #58

You can distort the data all you want, or in this case, put it in an absurd context to try and prove a point, but the fact remains - the legalization of marijuana is not without negative consequences. I'm surprised no one here has mentioned AAA's findings (legalization followed by a 2x increase in fatal marijuana-related crashes): http://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/05/fatal-road-crashes-involving... EDIT: Link to the study…

Driving while high should definitely be banned, but it kind of seems like they're making a big assumption here. >The percentage of drivers involved in fatal crashes who recently used marijuana more than doubled from eight to 17 percent between 2013 and 2014. How are they ruling out the fact that since it's been legalized, more people in general are using marijuana?

> Driving while high should definitely be banned

As there's no valid means of determining "while high", this is simply not a rational thing to attempt to do. Additionally, there's no data supporting that driving while high is actually a problem that needs solving, specifically that people don't know they're too high and drive anyway. You should first prove something is a problem before attempting to outlaw it.

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#233

Post by PhasmaFelis »

sudojudo wrote: post #205
amelius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a technology that can instantly detect whether someone's reflexes are impaired I'm not sure if that would work in practice. As mentioned, alcohol makes someone more confident, or more likely to do stupid things. The test should incorporate that. From another point of view, the alcohol tricks you into thinking your reflexes are still normal, while they are not. And this is the dangerous part, not the fact that your…

>alcohol makes someone more confident, or more likely to do stupid things. Reminds me of the "say the alphabet backwards" challenge that cops often present in sobriety tests. Drunk: ZYX... ZYXW... wait-wait... okay, ZYXTW, ummm... Sober: I can't do that. Stoned: Oh whaaat? No way, man. I can't even do that sober - shit, I mean...

Yeah, I've heard that it's supposed to be a gotcha, and the "actual" test is that only drunk people will attempt it, while sober people will, allegedly, refuse to try.

Because refusing to obey a police officer who's considering arresting you is such a sober decision.

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#234

Post by _acme »

yolesaber wrote: post #206
daveguy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not really sure what the solution is. Stop smoking weed? That doesn't sound at all worth the trouble.

Yes, let's just acquiesce to the whims of the state. Who cares about personal liberty or science or medicine or pharmacology? If anything, my experience with the state and it's drug prohibition, has made me want to smoke even more weed. Fuck the hick country cops who made me recite the alphabet backwards. Fuck the school admin who revoked my scholarship. I make six figures and travel the world for my job and for my p…

Is there any scientific evidence suggesting that marijuana treats depression or schizophrenia in any meaningful way? I don't believe so, which would suggest that you've merely been lucky not to have had additional episodes; for the safety of yourself and others, I would suggest you seek real, professional treatment and medication for your schizophrenia before you hurt yourself or someone else.

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#235

Post by badlucklottery »

Matt3o12_ wrote: post #228
sudojudo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>alcohol makes someone more confident, or more likely to do stupid things. Reminds me of the "say the alphabet backwards" challenge that cops often present in sobriety tests. Drunk: ZYX... ZYXW... wait-wait... okay, ZYXTW, ummm... Sober: I can't do that. Stoned: Oh whaaat? No way, man. I can't even do that sober - shit, I mean...

Why do cops do that in America anyways? Isn't it much more secure to always use a breathalyzer. It only takes a few minutes and you can drive on. I'm also quite sure that you could train for soberty tests (if they are as "unusual" as saying the alphabet backwards) when you're drunk so the cops think you're under the legal limit.

>Isn't it much more secure to always use a breathalyzer.

The field sobriety and breathalyzer tests are just excuses to get suspected DWIs into the drunk tank nowadays.

Once there they'll draw blood for drug and blood-alcohol testing. That's the test that will be used in court if it gets that far.

>I'm also quite sure that you could train for soberty tests

Not a doctor but I don't know that you could fake out a Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_sobriety_testing

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#236

Post by _acme »

mjevans wrote: post #226
err4nt wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not per-person. There's ONE standard for driving. If for any reason (weakness, blindness, lack of reflexes, impairment, age, etc) you can't reach that bar, then in reality you can't safely drive and so you shouldn't. It really doesn't matter the age, ability, or whatever - as long as a person CAN reach the minimum requirements to drive on the road, they should be allowed to chose to do so. I don't see a need to…

Is there a standard? What standards body has decided it and where can I see it's tests enumerated? Or do you mean the quick and dirty 'field sobriety tests' that many police offers use? I'm not aware of those being actual standards or tests so much as quick and dirty tools to justify the effort of /actual/ standards tests (BTW, I recall hearing that you should always demand the blood test over the breath tests).

I think blood alcohol content counts as an objective standard.

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#237

Post by _acme »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #132
CPLX wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn't say that a person with ADHD shouldn't drive on ADHD meds, but for anyone else, that would be effectively like driving on cocaine. I thought it was pretty interesting actually, the big chart in the linked article suggests that stimulants actually lower the likelihood of an accident compared to a baseline.

I once had to drive myself few hundred kilometers back home after a discharge from a psych ward - i was taking some new variation of activisation pill intended to make me less apathetic. While usually I am super careful, will yield/brake preventively to avoid an accident (haven't had one yet - in big part thanks to mindfulness and survival instict) - in the begining that medicine just threw it out the window. I quite…

How did you "quite literally" have a crash that didn't happen?

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#238

Post by metasean »

_acme wrote: post #234
yolesaber wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's just acquiesce to the whims of the state. Who cares about personal liberty or science or medicine or pharmacology? If anything, my experience with the state and it's drug prohibition, has made me want to smoke even more weed. Fuck the hick country cops who made me recite the alphabet backwards. Fuck the school admin who revoked my scholarship. I make six figures and travel the world for my job and for my p…

Is there any scientific evidence suggesting that marijuana treats depression or schizophrenia in any meaningful way? I don't believe so, which would suggest that you've merely been lucky not to have had additional episodes; for the safety of yourself and others, I would suggest you seek real, professional treatment and medication for your schizophrenia before you hurt yourself or someone else.

One reason there isn't significant scientific evidence is because there are way more hoops to jump through just to do the research, and even then researchers may be punished just for trying to do the research! - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/us/politics/medical-mariju...

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#239

Post by geierdmtr »

yolesaber wrote: post #206
daveguy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not really sure what the solution is. Stop smoking weed? That doesn't sound at all worth the trouble.

Yes, let's just acquiesce to the whims of the state. Who cares about personal liberty or science or medicine or pharmacology? If anything, my experience with the state and it's drug prohibition, has made me want to smoke even more weed. Fuck the hick country cops who made me recite the alphabet backwards. Fuck the school admin who revoked my scholarship. I make six figures and travel the world for my job and for my p…

i feel you. I had an accident and called the police. got arrested, jailed and beaten by guards. first they claimed i was drunk (i dont drink). i could not not stand on one leg for 30 seconds. after brethalizer showed 0 they claimed i was on drugs. got jailed for 2 nights. blood test came back negative for everything 40 days later. they retested it and found wellbutrin and xanax in my blood, my prescription meds. xanax i took 17 hours before the accident, and wellbutrin 8 hours. xanax was too low levels to confirm. they are charing me with DUI for wellbutrin now. everything to keep their story going. My reaction is to stop all the medications, i refuse to be blackmailed for my prescription meds, which dont even help me much. Feels good to be free-er. Hopefully never again.

Re: Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show

#240

Post by mjevans »

mikestew wrote: post #229
mjevans wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of the fight against such products being legal is from 'big pharma' trying to stop exactly this?

It has crossed my mind, given the difficulty my wife had in getting a card for migraines (in summary, docs that she went to said, "no". Try some big pharma pills with terrible side effects instead.) Though it could very well be an attempt to avoid becoming California, where the doctor next door to the dispensary will write you one up if you complain about your chronic hangnails.

I was talking more about making it as regulated as alcohol and smoking are today, given that the actual side effects are no worse (and in fact might be more preferable).
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