Over 40% of Deceased Drivers in Vehicle Crashes Test Positive for THC: Study

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.

>it turns out that they got dozens of speed camera tickets per year

To me the answer is quite simple for any of these. Treat repeated small infractions like bigger and bigger infractions. E.g. double the cost every iteration if it happens within a specific time frame.

Ok, you speed once? $100. Twice $200. Thrice $400. And so on. We only reset if you don’t reoffend for any speeding in 5 years. If you want to speed 20 times in 5 years, ok, go ahead. You pay $52,428,800.

Bonus points for making it start at something relative to your salary. People will stop at some point out of self-preservation.

If you don’t believe high fines work, drive from Switzerland to Germany. In Germany the Swiss have no problem speeding, because the fines are laughable. While south of the border they behave very nicely on the street.

You could extend this to other crimes. Google and Microsoft happily pay fines, since it’s cheaper than what they make from breaking anti-trust regulations. If you doubled it on each infraction they would at some time start feeling the pain.

What the heck? How can you get that many tickets and still have a license? (Or manageable insurance costs for that matter lol)

I’ve lived here my entire life, and there’s a significant difference between being a normal “aggressive” driving and many of the driving patterns that have emerged post-COVID. For example: blocking the box is (unfortunately) somewhat normal, while running through red lights and making illegal turns has (anecdotally) increased significantly.

It what way is speeding through red lights "a give and take thing"??? I never mentioned blocking the box or illegal parking, I'm not sure where you got that from.

Traffic safety engineers do not agree with all of those things. don't be an agressive driver even if everyone else is.

The worst are assholes "blocking the box" while there is space to pull forward along the curb or even the neighboring lane. This should be a tripled fine, simply for the monumental level of douchebaggery displayed.

Those who are autopsied due to traffic deaths clearly show a massive amount of THC impairment.

But the data here also show that it's a consistent level before and after legalization of cannabis in Ohio. So legalization of cannabis in Ohio did not cause a big increase in impairment-levels of THC in those who died in traffic.

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 said. Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. Some engage in shoplifting as a trade, while others are driven by addiction or mental illness; the police did not identify the 327 people in the analysis.

Not clear if that's only in 1 year, but 6,000 arrests for the same 327 people means 18 arrests per person on average. Maybe if you see the same person shoplifting more than 5 times you put him away for some real time. 10 times? Hell even 20 strikes and you're out would make a real dent and serve as a deterrent.

https://archive.is/VCKkk#selection-473.0-473.379

It's not entirely new! In 1975 during labor negotiations the police detonated a bomb on the mayor's yard, partially damaging the front door, and left a note saying "Don't threaten us":

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19750820.2.20

Since then, the SFPF have always had a culture of being above the law. The monopoly on legal violence thing can be taken a bit too far.

Yes, I am. Updated. Thank you

Are they cutting them off, though? If the street you're turning onto has two lanes, it shouldn't be a problem for two cars to turn at once. The car on the inside is required to turn into the nearest lane (according to any state law I know), so why can't the car on its left turn into its own lane?

Its usually drivers license transfers from countries where small bribes can "buy" you a license? https://wise.com/us/blog/transfer-international-driver-licen...

The worst offenders are usually the older generations of countries where driving en mass is a recent thing. The old red guard uncles and aunties regularly run red lights cause who gives a damn about the law when you experienced the rule of the mob throughout your formative years. So parents and grandparents of students would be my guess.

I'm not talking about one-ways, those are confusing in general. I'm talking about clearly marked off-ramps from freeways. In one situation the person had to drive over a fairly large bump in the median just to enter the wrong side of the freeway; again many signs to prevent such a thing and they still ended up in that predicament. Sometimes miles down the freeway before a cop pulls them over. It's terrifying.

I saw another one where the car tried to turn right into an off-ramp with a line of cars waiting at the light. Like wtf, do you not see the wall of cars and headlights in front of you? Where are you going?!

> I've been a daily user for over 10 years and also have a spotless driving record.

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.

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 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?

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.

It is very noticeable to basically everyone when you consume cannabis regularly.

Well, it would be good for the rest of us on the road if people driving two tons of murder box are 0% impaired.

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.

My friend group in college were heavy weed users, and generally all of them drove while high. I remember one saying he enjoyed it because he felt like he was driving a space ship. I asked if he still thought it was safe to drive, given that impression, and he said yes.

I drove high a few times when I was younger and I had to set my cruise control to 25mph to make sure I was going fast enough haha never again. I just use before bed now or occasionally during the day if I know I won't have to drive anywhere.

Even though their sentiment is wrong, I get why they would feel that way. Marginally drunk vs marginally high certainly feel* very different in how they would impact my own ability to drive.

That said, I don't do either. I also wouldn't take any amount of weed while working, but I'd feel comfortable having a beer during lunch if appropriate (work lunch/celebrate, e.g.).

That wouldn't actually mean no effect, you need 40% of people driving to test positive for it to be no effect. It's unlikely the population driving is equivalent to the population at large - for one there's a set of responsible people who won't drive while high. For another weed use isn't randomly distributed through the population but correlated with certain subsets, which probably have a non-average rate of driving just by coincidence.

(Not that it really matters since I don't buy for a second that anywhere near 40% of people/people-driving are high at any given time. I also don't put much faith in numbers in the abstract of a a yet-to-be-published study...)

> If 40% of people test positive for THC, then this would mean there is no effect

Can you explain what you mean by this?

The article is not saying 40% of all drivers tested positive, it’s stating that 40% of people who died in a car accident tested positive, at pretty high levels too.

I'm replying to a comment suggesting that this data may be close to population levels rather than something different in the autopsy population.

I'm arguing that if the population data looks anything like the autopsy data, it would imply a massive epidemic of THC overuse.