Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by eimrine » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

discreteevent wrote: post #447

eimrine wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either O B E Y or do what you named as "more work". Different person chooses different way of dealing with annoyances.

Don't fool yourself. In the end you have to obey the laws of physics and the punishment is extremely harsh and permanent.

I read comment as "don't resist our egregious power, our business is to keep becoming more powerful by arguments with different persuasive power".

I have to admit, the car safety argument is among the most persuasive, like do you want to get harmed? But in reality the question is not about "harming and nothing more", the question is about growing the egregious power AND caring about the tax payers simultaneously.

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

#482

Post by rayiner » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:09 PM UTC

boston_clone wrote: post #477

rayiner wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explaining why I never encountered it. Even today usage is quite unevenly distributed. I’m from an affluent, WASPy town in Virginia. By contrast it was common even in the 1990s in the lower class parts of Oregon where my wife grew up.

Interesting. In my experience, the self-described affluent WASP-y types are exactly the kind of people that should probably smoke a joint and chill the fuck out every once in a while, lest they end up as close-minded conservatives. Thanks for sharing!

You’re more likely to find tattoos and marijuana smokers at a Trump rally than in the congressional district where I grew up. It was solidly red when I was growing up, but today is the orderly and industrious wing of the democratic party (Biden +18).

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

#483

Post by ErroneousBosh » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

yesbabyyes wrote: post #413

n8cpdx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

> 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? Wait, how is mayo, vegan or not, related to dairy?

For some reason, people lump eggs in with dairy, presumably because they're unaware of the difference between hens and cows. You'd have to have quite a lot of detectable THC in your system to confuse the two, but here we are, people think that eggs are the same as milk.

To be fair, my milkman delivers eggs as well as milk, cream, and butter, but they come from a totally different farm.

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

#484

Post by bloppe » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

Anybody who's smoked a lot of weed knows that THC tolerance works very differently from alcohol tolerance. If you've been ripping dabs every couple hours for the last month, you might be well above the legal limit and barely feel different at all. On the other hand, if you haven't smoked in a year and take a single hit of a modern joint, you could be floored.

I'm not sure how THC intoxication could be measured, but blood THC concentration feels like an incredibly crude metric compared to BAC.

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

#485

Post by mattmaroon » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

nobody9999 wrote: post #480

Scoundreller wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's evidence of increased public/open-air consumption, which is to be expected with legalization Don't need to hide it anymore, especially if the local police don't have much to do otherwise

>That's evidence of increased public/open-air consumption, which is to be expected with legalization >Don't need to hide it anymore, especially if the local police don't have much to do otherwise Yep. At least in New York City before legalization, using cannabis in public earned you an arrest and a night in jail despite the fact that it wasn't even a misdemeanor, just a local code violation with a $50 fine. That was…

I have DEFINITELY noticed an increase in public usage yeah. Which is strange because that was not legalized in Ohio. Smoking a joint in your car going down the road or at the park is as illegal as it ever was.

I’m sure overall usage numbers are up because I know a lot of people who started using it after they could buy it legally, but those people are all also infrequent users and I’m sure are not driving high. The people who would be deterred by weed being illegal are probably all in the “won’t drive stoned” category. (I’m sure many infrequent users pre-legalization, myself included, were never much worried about the legality but don’t drive high because we like being alive, and we continue to not do so now.)

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

#486

Post by nobody9999 » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #445

Aurornis wrote: post #159

Some helpful context: The number of Americans age 12 and older who report using any marijuana product at least once in the past year is around 20% (Source https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-cannabis-alcohol-use-di... ) if I use one of the highest reported use numbers I can find. Even if you dismiss all of the questions brought up in these comments like the use of mean levels instead of median, not accounting for to…

You can't drive at 12 though surely? And you have to account for the fact that young people are going to be more likely to die in crashes and more likely to use weed. This kind of test seems silly. It's going to be far too hard to remove the confounding variables. Much easier just to give people different levels of weed and have them do driving tests. Directly measure their driving skill instead of doing it by shitty…

>This kind of test seems silly. It's going to be far too hard to remove the confounding variables. Much easier just to give people different levels of weed and have them do driving tests. Directly measure their driving skill instead of doing it by shitty proxy like this.

Given that differing levels of THC impact people differently both because of potential "tolerance" in frequent users as compared with occasional users and individual responses to cannabis (and even different cannabis strains with varied chemical profiles). There may well be other confounding factors as well.

Cannabis does not affect everyone the same way. It doesn't even affect the same people in the same way every time.

As such, while the testing you suggest may well be useful over the long term, it will require large populations and repeated testing at varying levels of both subjective intoxication and THC levels in the blood over extended periods to get good data about how THC use (both in temporal proximity and overall usage patterns) causes impairment.

As anecdata, I can absolutely say that lower levels of THC consumption results in much more impairment if cannabis hasn't been used recently and higher levels result in less impairment if there has been recent use.

That's not to say that driving (or any high-risk activity) is appropriate while actually high. It is not. Driving while impaired (by anything) is a terrible idea.

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

#487

Post by boston_clone » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #482

boston_clone wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In my experience, the self-described affluent WASP-y types are exactly the kind of people that should probably smoke a joint and chill the fuck out every once in a while, lest they end up as close-minded conservatives. Thanks for sharing!

You’re more likely to find tattoos and marijuana smokers at a Trump rally than in the congressional district where I grew up. It was solidly red when I was growing up, but today is the orderly and industrious wing of the democratic party (Biden +18).

An inspiring tale of progress and change for the better! May more southern states unfetter themselves from regressive views.

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

#488

Post by kelseyfrog » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

almosthere wrote: post #369

kelseyfrog wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has that ever worked? AFAIK, all evidence says that people don't consider consequences. If they did, they wouldn't be behaving like that in the first place. Punitive punishment feels much much better for people who have a specific set of values.

Escalating punishments often tend to take the "1-3%" of the bad people out of society that cause all the crime. Remember from recent history these people that had 34 arrests or 73 arrests and they're out murdering people?

I mean the serving as an example to the rest part. Has that ever worked?

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

#489

Post by metadope » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 7:19 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #485

nobody9999 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's evidence of increased public/open-air consumption, which is to be expected with legalization >Don't need to hide it anymore, especially if the local police don't have much to do otherwise Yep. At least in New York City before legalization, using cannabis in public earned you an arrest and a night in jail despite the fact that it wasn't even a misdemeanor, just a local code violation with a $50 fine. That was…

I have DEFINITELY noticed an increase in public usage yeah. Which is strange because that was not legalized in Ohio. Smoking a joint in your car going down the road or at the park is as illegal as it ever was. I’m sure overall usage numbers are up because I know a lot of people who started using it after they could buy it legally, but those people are all also infrequent users and I’m sure are not driving high. The p…

My fragrant walks around town put me in proximity to neighbors kicking it on their own property, visible and aromatic but not crossing the threshold into what I would consider to be 'public usage'. They're in their garage on folding chairs with the door open, or in the yard, or on a back porch.

In addition to the distinctive smell of marijuana, there is often a recreational fire (wood smoke), and/or a BBQ (sizzling meat). It's publicly visible and apparent, but on private property.

I have never been that social, haven't accepted a pass in decades, don't imbibe myself (despite my internym), and don't recommend it to young folk, but I must be getting a microdose and a minor contact high from the gentle breeze that floats through town more often since legalization.

Second hand smoke is real, yo. The wind blows.

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

#490

Post by roughly » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 8:00 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #342

heavyset_go wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that organized retail theft is significant or "most" is a myth[1] [1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/retail-theft-in-us-cities...

Ah as long as Brookings Institute tells me it's a myth, I'll ignore the people selling basic toiletries right outside of drug stores, or bike messengers riding with suspicious taped up bikes that are poorly suited for heavy city use, or the videos of people coming in as a group, loading the bags and making off in get-away cars. Ignore what's in front of you, or the fact that nearly a third of shoplifting can be track…

The Brookings institute is hardly a lefty rag - they're about as centrist/neoliberal capitalist as an institution comes.

> Ignore what's in front of you

Yes, the general advice is to look past specific notable anecdotes and try to identify actual data to validate whether your emotional experience of the world is reflective of the world or of you. In this case, the numbers suggest the problem is not the world, no matter how many videos you're seeing on TikTok or wherever.

A real problem for assessing truth in the modern world is that anything that happens anywhere is instantly available to you as a decontextualized short-form video, and it's your job as a responsible media consumer to understand that ten videos on your feed are not a trend outside your feed.

> Ah yes, evil corporations like to close stores and forgo profit for ... reasons.

No, they're not forgoing profits, they're choosing to close stores with lower levels of profits than they'd prefer and using retail theft as an excuse. It wouldn't be the first time and it sure won't be the last time that a business tries to deflect blame for its poor planning onto the rest of us.