Posted on 02/09/2015 3:35:55 PM PST by Ken H
Marijuana use has not been found to increase the risk of car crashes, according to a new federal report.
Studying car accidents in Virginia Beach, Va., during a 20-month period ending in 2012, researchers randomly sampled 3,000 accident-involved drivers and found no evidence suggesting those with marijuana in their system were more prone to accidents, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report released Friday.
When researchers controlled for factors such as age and gender, they found no evidence marijuana use increases accident risks. This was despite the fact that, in the study, drivers who tested positive for marijuana use happened to be involved in more accidents.
By comparison, the study found drivers with breath alcohol of .08 to be about four times more likely than sober drivers to be involved in accidents. Those nearly double the legal limit, at .15, were 12 times more likely to crash.
The study is billed as the largest ever conducted to assess the relative crash risk of drivers who consume alcohol compared to pot.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Roadway deaths fall nearly 25 percent in a decade, fatality rates at a historic low
Dec 19, 2014
WASHINGTON The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) today released the 2013 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data that shows a 3.1 percent decrease from the previous year and a nearly 25 percent decline in overall highway deaths since 2004. In 2013, 32,719 people died in traffic crashes. The estimated number of people injured in crashes also declined by 2.1 percent.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/2014/traffic-deaths-decline-in-2013
Heard a comedian a while back say when you’re drunk you drive 90mph and if feels like 30. When your stoned you drive 30mph and if feels like 90.
Don't worry. It will make more sense when you're sober.
: )
My girlfriend had a lot of moments like that when I tried to teach her how to drive my manual transmission cars. I gave up, and told her to stick to automatics. I thought she was going to destroy my clutch. P.S. She didn't use drugs.
As for my group of friends when young, we had a lot of "Cheech and Chong" moments. Like the time four of us were getting stoned in my friend's Chevy parked inside his garage. Someone started banging on the garage door, shining a flashlight through the window and screaming "Open up in there, Now!". We quickly swallowed all the dope (it was a lot) before opening the garage door, only to find another friend laughing out loud at us. Thankfully, none of us needed to drive after that (we were upchucking all night). I thank God my girlfriend got me to quit drugs.
Also note that medical mj states, for the most part, appear to have safer highways than states without.
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview
The amount of credibility that Freepers give a "new federal report" or "a new study says...." for that matter, really just depends on what said report says and how much it agrees or disagrees with their already pre conceived beliefs.
In the statistical sense, I have no problem with the study’s implication that dope is less likely to contribute to auto accidents than alcohol. But... I’d like to see data on the nature of the accidents (congestion, speed, time,) and the regions from where the data was sampled. Does the data account for areas experiencing growing dope use, or is does it concern areas with stabilized usage?
Nobody wasted should be behind the wheel.
In an endnote to the study, the researchers pointed to several limitations with the research. One is that marijuana can be detected in the blood up to one week after use. And, therefore, the researchers said, "the prevalence of nonalcohol drugs reported in this study should be interpreted as an indicator of drug use, not necessarily a measurement of drug impairment.
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And that still does not alter the fact that highway fatalities are at record lows, even in states that have fully legalized. Prohibitionists said that wouldn't happen.
Cop: “can I see your licence?”
Cheech: “It’s on the back of the car man!”
Dude!
But they were already in an accident to participate in the study!
Did I misread something?
Right, because the validity of a scientific finding is judged not by the soundness of its methodology but by whether it agrees with what you already believe.
There was a control group:
“One week after a driver involved in a crash provided data for the study, control drivers were selected at the same location, day of week, time of day, and direction of travel as the original crash. This allowed a comparison to be made between use of alcohol and other drugs by drivers involved in a crash with drivers not in a crash, resulting in an estimation of the relative risk of crash involvement associated with alcohol or drug use.”
http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nti/pdf/812117-Drug_and_Alcohol_Crash_Risk.pdf
You must have been the top scientist on the committee.
Video taped Driving Tests have been done for years. After moderate dosage drivers obviously lose concentration and coordination. These scientists are no better than the so called global warming scientists. And that is all this report proves. You are gullible to believe it, but it obviously fits your needs.
No necessary contradiction there - maybe the road drivers simply weren't dosed to that level, or maybe the videotaped closed-course tests failed to capture some relevant aspect of real-world driving.
These scientists are no better than the so called global warming scientists.
Aaand there it is: some bad science has been done, so any inconvenient science can be assumed bad with no further thought. You have fun with that.
My feeling now as it has been is, I don’t care what the hell you do to yourself in your own home, just don’t take out into public until you’re sober whether it’s alcohol or so called recreational drugs. I have seen too many of both stripes that think they are just fine and functional in public when they are impaired.
Hopeless
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