But the truth is that habitual users are always impaired. Source: former habitual user.
Every single one of them denied impairment during those periods. Often vehemently so, belittling anyone who suggested they might be impaired as having succumbed to propaganda.
Every single one of them remarked that they were sharper, more alert, and had better memory after stopping.
It’s an interesting phenomenon to watch. I think it’s becoming more socially acceptable to acknowledge that marijuana causes impairment even after the obvious effects have subsided, which was a taboo topic in the years when saying anything negative about marijuana would get you attacked as being pro-prohibition or pro-imprisonment of drug users. I even remember one of the big technical forums in the 2010s had a long debate thread where people were claiming that THC made them better drivers and citing YouTube videos and “studies” to back it up. It would be rare to see anyone try to make that claim in today’s environment.
isn't that just common addiction response?
"no, nothing's wrong with me. my drugs aren't the problem - you are the problem"
But you'll still find some small percentage of them claiming they wouldn't be impaired.
Source: have actually spend a lot of time around addicts.
You have to tune down your self-estimate’s value if your self-estimate shows historical poor performance.
(To be clear, I don't think every daily user is a burnout.)
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?
I don't trust anyone else on the road because all of you are comically bad drivers compared to someone like me.
Wait, how is mayo, vegan or not, related to dairy?
A perfect vegan alternative to mayonnaise is aioli, which consists only of garlic, olive oil, and salt.
To be fair, my milkman delivers eggs as well as milk, cream, and butter, but they come from a totally different farm.
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.
"Driving under the influence of cannabis was associated with a significantly increased risk of motor vehicle collisions compared with unimpaired driving (odds ratio 1.92 (95% confidence interval 1.35 to 2.73); P=0.0003); we noted heterogeneity among the individual study effects (I2=81)".
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 pretend that THC use is equivalent to drinking water.
The mental gymnastics being done in this thread to try to ignore this study are fascinating.
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.
Yes, IF. That was my point.
I knew a guy who drove home from bars unquestionably over the legal limit (example: 4-5 drinks in 90 minutes) every single weekend for years without getting caught or getting in accident.
It doesn’t mean he wasn’t impaired.
Alcohol is so much more impairing. I think just being a daily user isn't the issue. It's the proximity to last use and obviously quantity.
Your average driver on weed: drives 5 miles per hour to the taco bell drive thru
[0] https://www.friedmansimon.com/faqs/how-common-are-car-accide...
n sample size of 1 does not prove anything.
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.
I know this is going to get downvoted by people who cant imagine an alternative but it’s possible all the same.
FYI murder requires intent, otherwise it is just manslaughter. Your indoctrination is showing by your turns of phrase.
There are ways to make it less dangerous, sure. But they're never 100% safe. Which makes them, by definition, inherently dangerous. That's... What those words mean.
Like, really man? If you can't even recognize as dangerous the one activity that famously requires someone specifically trained to save people to be present, then I'm happy to end this conversation right here. It's clearly just a waste of time all around. I just hope there's no one in your life depending on you to judge what's safe and what's not.
And swimming pools are pretty dangerous though? There are around 4,500 drowning deaths per year in the US, so on the order of 10x fewer than due to car accidents, but still quite a lot.
I agree with you that it’s a comically wrong threshold, which is why I offered that series that was progressively more safe but never 100% safe as examples against that line of reasoning.
So yea cars are inherently dangerous.
I’m not sure who you think I’m indoctrinated by but around 3000 people are killed every year in my country by cars.
Meanwhile around 200 people are murdered each year.
I’ll give you one try to guess which one dominates the newspapers and public discourse.
And you tell me something about indoctrination, real funny
No driving if you haven't been getting proper sleep; no driving if jet lagged. No driving if your attention is impaired by grief, stress, or impatience. Or if your annual physical reveals a risk. Or if you've ever had psychological complaints.
We should absolutely make transportation safer, but it's a continuum of tradeoffs.
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of preventable death for people aged 5–22, and the second most common cause for ages 23–67.
But yes, what you say is the logical consequence (except I'm not kidding about grief and impatience).
My point really is that if we want our kids not to get horribly injured or killed, we can't just focus on "other people" making bad decisions like driving drunk. We have to acknowledge that we've collectively built a system that requires people to put each other in danger with cars, and we have to think about how to change that. Cars bring a lot of benefits like autonomy and decentralization, how do we keep that but kill fewer people?
'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
This is a solved problem: look at the current state-of-the-art road design documents from the Netherlands. Apply. Problem solved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
(Wikipedia links to itf-oecd.org/ where those numbers come From)
And in particular for the Uber situation, if taking a taxi 10 miles causes 15 miles of taxi-driving, that's less safe than driving 10 miles with a small to medium impairment.
Let me guess, the painted line on the road did not in fact prevent the vehicle from crossing into the bike lane? What we as a society consider acceptable cycling infrastructure is pathetic.