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Legal pot and car crashes: Yes, there's a link

Ikari said:
Some asshole Californian on my way to work this morning. I swear to god those jerks have zero concept of driving.

We should build a wall around Texas and California, save the rest of the Republic some headaches, lol.
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lol...oh you Americans and your walls.... :p haha I get it though, if I could build a wall around Toronto, I would...haha
 
PirateMk1 said:
I am laughing my ass off. You have NO clue. You are not as good of drivers as you think, not by a long shot. American drivers in general are pretty darn tame. California has ****ty roads and their drivers are doing something other than driving while driving. Californians and Americans would be eaten alive if they drove elsewhere. Try Europe or the middle east. South America or Asia.
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Bull. They can't successfully transition from donkeys and water buffalos to become "California qualified"!
 
Renae said:
Excited to see more studies into this threat to the roads.
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I won't deny it warrants some research, but I'd like to see something by a more reputable institute.

These "statistics" always say marijuana related crashes are up. You never bother looking into the study and realize they're equating the driver testing positive for THC with marijuana being a factor in the cause of the accident. I'm sure I don't have to remind you THC can stay in the system for 20-60 days. Bad science is bad science, and we've all seen it being passed around by those who are trying to use (psuedo)science and work backwards with their anti-legalization agenda as a starting point rather than a conclusion.

There are real dragons out there but you're fixated on this old windmill......
 
TheGoverness said:
At least wait 'till I get out of Texas first! :lol:
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You coming to Colorado? If so then no.

Everytime there's a little bit of rain or a little bit of snow, people are in the ditches, crashing up on I-25. And that's how you know who's from Texas and California. It's one of the reasons our car insurance is so high, I really wish we could stop Texans and Californians from moving into Colorado. Rather take folk from Jersey, lol.
 
Fenton Lum said:
Boozers drive 90mph, potheads drive 20mph.
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The drunk driver runs through the stop sign an says "**** it!"

The stoned driver stops and waits for it to turn green
 
countryboy said:
Eating ramen noodles with chopsticks, while steering with your knees contributes to car crashes. Should we criminalize ramen noodles, chopsticks, or both?
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Criminalize them both, then maybe in 90 years or so we can start to do real research on the issue and see if there's a real threat there that really warrants restricting personal freedom.
 
shagg said:
Criminalize them both, then maybe in 90 years or so we can start to do real research on the issue and see if there's a real threat there that really warrants restricting personal freedom.
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For profit prisons need bodies, and in a post-industrial society where the "we're-abringin'-ya-jobs-back" lie is going nowhere, the system can turn $40-50K per year per hominid.
 
chuckiechan said:
Bull. They can't successfully transition from donkeys and water buffalos to become "California qualified"!
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Horse **** you can take ANY driver from most elsewhere in the world and they will do just fine on American streets. Visa versa not so much. Middle Easterners and Europeans especially can kick California drivers butts. Californians would actually have to pay attention to their driving overseas if they like breathing.
 
countryboy said:
Eating ramen noodles with chopsticks, while steering with your knees contributes to car crashes. Should we criminalize ramen noodles, chopsticks, or both?
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Better not. Criminalize ramen, and heads will fly!

I simply cannot function without ramen noodles.
 
PirateMk1 said:
Horse **** you can take ANY driver from most elsewhere in the world and they will do just fine on American streets. Visa versa not so much. Middle Easterners and Europeans especially can kick California drivers butts. Californians would actually have to pay attention to their driving overseas if they like breathing.
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Californians have learned to art of highway survival, and have lived to pass their genes on unlike the suicide squads you Europeans call "Traffic".
 
Ikari said:
You coming to Colorado? If so then no.

Everytime there's a little bit of rain or a little bit of snow, people are in the ditches, crashing up on I-25. And that's how you know who's from Texas and California. It's one of the reasons our car insurance is so high, I really wish we could stop Texans and Californians from moving into Colorado. Rather take folk from Jersey, lol.
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I just had my insurance rates raised almost 1/3rd because I changed zip codes. But most people pay around $80-100 and that's about where I'm at if I paid monthly. Just out of curiosity, is Colorado more or less than that? (I live in MN, so it makes sense it would be expensive since it snows 194 times a year here)
 
Mustachio said:
I just had my insurance rates raised almost 1/3rd because I changed zip codes. But most people pay around $80-100 and that's about where I'm at if I paid monthly. Just out of curiosity, is Colorado more or less than that? (I live in MN, so it makes sense it would be expensive since it snows 194 times a year here)
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Well I insure myself and my wife on 2 vehicles, for the both of us, it's about 200-ish a month if I break it into monthly payments. It's actually higher than it was in Jersey.
 
Ikari said:
Well I insure myself and my wife on 2 vehicles, for the both of us, it's about 200-ish a month if I break it into monthly payments. It's actually higher than it was in Jersey.
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Uhg, I can't imagine needing to have more expensive coverage than if you were sharing the roads with the real housewives.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Under the influence, is under the influence.

I wouldn't drive stoned either, regardless of what some knucklehead say's about doing things better while stoned.

There is a time and a place to get high or tipsy.
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Problem is that a lot of stoners get high all day long. They can't help but drive while baked. It's one of the few things wrong with pot, IMO. Too many people like it too much and start smoking as soon as they wake up.
 
This particular study only shows correlation. But regardless, it wouldn't surprise me if legalized MJ causes a slight increase in car accidents. Ban alcohol and cellphones and I'm sure there will be fewer accidents too.

Liberty is inherently dangerous. Some of the safest countries have the most authoritarian governments and draconian laws.
 
calamity said:
Problem is that a lot of stoners get high all day long. They can't help but drive while baked. It's one of the few things wrong with pot, IMO. Too many people like it too much and start smoking as soon as they wake up.
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Being in construction since I sold my Freightliner back in 2003, I have done nothing but construction. 50% of the drywall, roofing, and masonry sub crews clowns are baked when they show up for work. They will sit in their vehicles hitting on the pipe until it's time to start.

Now that I run my own show, I run them straight off my jobs. I fired 2 long time contractor friends who run drywall & roofing crews because they continuously sent guys out to my jobs stoned off their asses. One of their crew members threatened me after I told him and the rest of his stoner fluff's to get the **** off my job.

Screw em!
 
Renae said:
Legal pot and car crashes: Yes, there's a link - CBS News

I'm exited they are taking an in depth on this now that they have evidence. Show the true cost of "Chill dude, it's just mj"
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You really should read these articles before posting them.

1. They admitted that actual studies do not find a link: According to the HLDI, past researchers haven't been able to "definitively connect marijuana use with real-world crashes," and even a federal study failed to find such a link. "Studies on the effects of legalizing marijuana for medical use have also been inconclusive," said the HLDI.



2. They did not do an actual study to look for causation. They simply compared states with legalized pot to their neighboring states. They did not compare them to other states one would expect to see the same effect IF it were true that decreased criminalization causes more accidents, like the very many states with decriminalization. They also did not compare them to states with similar urban vs. rural populations, or similar speed limits, or any other attempt to find a good comparison. They just looked at neighboring states, apparently.

3. As usual, they talk about marijuana "showing up more frequently among people involved in crashes." Well, guess what: marijuana is detectable in urine up to 28 DAYS after smoking, and longer in the blood. I wouldn't be surprised if more people in general had detectable THC metabolites in legalization states, but that doesn't tell us anything about whether they were high at the time or whether their being high was the cause of the accident.

4.They also don't mention whether people are being tested more often after crashes. If police wanted to argue that pot was bad, they would ramp up testing of drivers post-legalization, which in turn would turn up more people who had smoked. That would make the data bad. The rate of testing would have to remain the same for an increase to have a shot at being meaningful.

5. The same results would appear if the unnamed "neighboring states" saw an overall decrease in crashes while in-state crashes remained constant. Because, again, they're talking about collision claim rates (not crash rates, actually) in legalization states relative to collision claim rates in unspecified neighboring states.

6. There also is no comparison to each state's historical rate of crashes. Hell, as noted, we don't even know if the legalization states' crash rates themselves increased. We don't know if there has been a general upward or downward trend lately.

7. As your article notes, the group is funded by insurers whose "vested interested" is "not having to pay claims". Gee, I wonder if they have anything to gain by setting the groundwork for denying claims if someone tests positive for a drug they may not have ingested for four weeks.

8. There is absolutely no discussion of any attempt to determine any other possible causes. Were speed limits on highways raised? Were city speed limits raised? Are more people texting and driving? Etc.




Just because the media says something is "tied to" something does not make it so. The media says all sorts of garbage. You need to carefully parse the article to see what is actually being said, which is that there were more insurance claims submitted for collisions in four legalization states, as compared to neighboring states which may or may not be good comparisons.
 
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Mustachio said:
So I read this story and I'm really struggling with this graph, it says there is a 3% increase in collisions since 2014 compared to neighboring states. What does that mean? Couldn't that mean there is a 3% decrease in collisions in the neighboring states? Could it mean there is a 3% increase in texting related claims? Where is the link to recreational marijuana in this study other than the fact that Colorado and the other two states legalized the recreational use of marijuana?

I'm not advocating for driving under the influence. Especially Ambien. I just don't get what this is supposed to prove.
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More good points.


It'd be nice if the article had at least linked to the study. The media is terrible about reporting on any sort of study, whether it's hard science, or the wishy-washy world of statistical correlation.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Under the influence, is under the influence.

I wouldn't drive stoned either, regardless of what some knucklehead say's about doing things better while stoned.

There is a time and a place to get high or tipsy.
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Well, I'm not about to advocate for DUI, but they actually did study this as well as they could - ie, in a driving simulator - and found that while novice smokers were noticeably impaired while high, experienced (aka, pretty regular) smokers showed very little impairment in the driving simulator. The people who drank were, naturally, worse regardless of experience.
 
chuckiechan said:
I disagree. California drivers are among the best in the world. We routinely drive 80 in bumper to bumper traffic while on the phone taking notes. We can spot drunks and stoners for a 1/4 mile and know not to spook them with a blind spot pass.

To drive in California, you really have to be good. Our freeways are good, fast, and congested. Our surface streets a celebration of bazzare signage and conflicting lights and signals, not to mention mixing with pharmaceutically impaired drivers, and construction zones.

A Coloradoian (?) would be terrified and crying like a little girl after ten minutes of commute hours on a busy freeway.

We may be the most screwed up state in the nation, but boy can we drive!
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I've never found L.A. traffic to live up to its reputation. Though I've stayed mostly around Hollywood and north.
 
Renae said:
Excited to see more studies into this threat to the roads.
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"Studies"? You might as well just have cited some Jeff Sessions commentary. This thing was garbage.

It may work if all you wanted to do was say some negative things about those dirty stoners and high-five a fellow drug warrior or two, but if you want to convince someone that legalization is bad, you need a lot more than this.
 
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