Cannabis and driving? Studies reveal big risks | Hacker News Reader

Cannabis and driving? Studies reveal big risks

news.cuanschutz.edu

23 pointsPaulHoule22 comments

It's not unexpected that infrequent users are more impacted by acute use.

The article doesn't quantify accident risk, from what I can see.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), however, actually has quantified the relative change in accident risk. [1]

The table in the linked document (N/A = not available):

                Crash Risk   Culpability
    Alcohol (BAC = 0.02) 1.03–1.19 1.36
    Alcohol (BAC = 0.05) 1.38–1.75 2.19
    Alcohol (BAC = 0.08) 2.69–2.92 3.63
    Cannabis 1.11–1.42 1.20–1.42
    Antidepressants 1.35–1.40 N/A
    Antihistamines 1.12 N/A
    Benzodiazepines and Z-hypnotics 1.17–2.30 1.41
    Opiates 1.68–2.29 1.47

In Australia, the legal limit for Blood Alcohol Concentration when driving is 0.05. We are subject to roadside drug testing that checks for alcohol, methamphetamine, cannabis and cocaine. But not benzos, opiates or depressants, AFAIK. In almost all Australian states and territories, having a cannabis prescription is not a valid legal defence against loss of licence when a roadside test detects cannabis metabolites. The tests do not indicate impairment, only past use within the last few days. The Australian political class actively resists changing the law to be fair to medicinal cannabis patients.

If the system was really fair, it would perform a field sobriety test to prove impairment. Recognising that cannabis use only increases crash risk by the same amount as a legal BAC would be a good start.

[1] https://www1.racgp.org.au/getattachment/ef4cc327-723b-42c9-b...

> Participants in the occasional and daily groups used their own cannabis at the doses they typically consume.

> “We didn’t tell people what to use because there’s a really big continuum of how people use and how they respond to that dosage,” Brooks-Russell said, explaining that they wanted these studies to reflect how people use cannabis outside of the lab.

Actually a really smart process decision - in past studies I’ve seen they always used a prescribed dose but having the participants choose makes a lot of sense

Risks may include:

- Stopping at green lights

- Dropping the doob between the seats

- The Ozium can rolling out of reach

- Driving thru multiple fast food venues in one trip

ozium reference was a nice touch - always was told that was the best for pot smoke, meanwhile it just made the room smell like weed and cherries

Ozium Blunt scent - for decoy purposes

I don't see how anyone would even want to attempt to drive while baked.

/Some/ people view Cannabis as some wonder drug, that has no negative effects whatsoever, and really play on that idea.

These same people also wanted to keep it medicinal, so if they kill a family while under the influence, it's not counted as under the influence.

What do you mean by "same people"? Who are these people? The comment you're responding to certainly doesn't specify, but somehow you know that they're the same as the people who said whatever batshit thing you think they said.

I'm prepared to be wrong though. I searched the internet for six whole minutes and found no evidence of even a single person, let alone the group of people you say exist.

Because it's fun, and many people (myself of 15 years ago included) are fucking idiots.

I am still an idiot. But driving baked would be impossible :)

Practice makes perfect I guess.

LOL Hell,no: Its fucking boring! You have to look at the street, manouvre a quite complex vehicle correctly, listen to neighbour seat etc. - this is energy exausting, no energy providing :-D

I had to do so once and I found it very unpleasant. I was aware the whole time that I should not be driving. (I was also full of adrenaline and stress, which are confounding factors, but I'd driven under similarly stressed conditions and being high made it much more unpleasant.)

Haven’t gotten around to get myself a car yet, but I did have one of those electric scooters (2x900W motors I think, up to 50-60km/h depending on the climb) along with full gear (from moto shoes, gloves, and a helmet, to kevlar pants and an armored jacket). We had “roads” for bicycles and stuff like that, heavily isolated from regular traffic, and maybe having 1-2 people every 500-1000m.

I very often went on a baked circuit there, not as a “let’s get a faster lap time”, but more of a “clear my mind” type of ride. For things like this, I definitely prefer to be baked simply because of how it weirdly helped me disconnect from everything else going on in my life, focusing only on the about 15-20km of quiet, nature-adjacent, 95% empty, smooth bike road.

When I took the same scooter out to ride within traffic (akin to a motorbike, following all traffic rules aside from “vehicle registration” and “a license” because these weren’t and AFAIK still aren’t feasible for these), it was a whole different story. What riding with cannabis showed me was that you need to have trust in both yourself and your surroundings. But riding in traffic, sharing the road with people that aren’t even used to seeing motorbikes on the road that often (let alone electric scooters sharing the road with cars), being baked definitely made things more stressful than it would have needed to be.

n=1 but I see tons of distracted driving, like relatedly people still text and talk and drive and... it mostly works out ok

So still probably ideal for people to aim to be perfectly sober and focused, but... we might end up "ok" in a lot of cases even if that ideal isn't achieved

Some weeks ago I saw a cop in her car and she was texting while rolling slowly toward the red traffic light (for sure, somehow understandable, but as a cop you shouldnt do those things in public?)

TL;DR Nonsense "study"

A study for real world risks based on a videogame, of all things? Its impossible to directly map the experience of being behind the wheel in real life to a game, and the article doesn't even mention whether it's an actual simulation (like beam.NG), game-like (as in Assetto Corsa), or plain arcade fantasy (GTA, Need for Speed) OBVIOUSLY people are gonna play games in a more fun/different way under the influence They even admit that inhaled usage showed little to no consistency in driving difference Bias disclaimer: I stopped consumption some time back

"Participants got behind the wheel of a driving simulator equipped with everything you’d find in a real car – from the steering wheel to the pedals and dashboard. A large touchscreen, similar to those found in newer vehicles, allows for music to play and text messages to come through. Three oversized monitors provide 180 degrees of visual coverage to create a realistic, immersive driving environment."

Seems pretty clearly a simulator, they use that word several times.

Still a simulator is not going to replicate the mind set of actually driving a vehicle. It probably helps a little bit that the participants are high, but still it’s not even close.

racing drivers train on them. So I'd say they get pretty close.

The point is that there are many kinds of driving simulators. Some are better at simulating than others.

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