| ▲ | terminalshort 2 days ago |
| But the truth is that habitual users are always impaired. Source: former habitual user. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I’ve never been a smoker, but I’ve known a lot of friends who went through periods of smoking multiple times per week or even daily for periods of time. 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. |
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| ▲ | NooneAtAll3 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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. isn't that just common addiction response? "no, nothing's wrong with me. my drugs aren't the problem - you are the problem" | | |
| ▲ | okdood64 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think most addicts when not high/drunk/fucked up off their substance of choice would admit that they they are more impaired and not good to drive when they are on their substance of choice. 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. |
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| ▲ | anjel a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Anecdata: There are neurochemical upregulation effects to daily THC use over time, and upon discontinuance that upregulation (which can take months or even years to wear off and perhaps not) is in itself quite apparent. | |
| ▲ | renewiltord a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Isn’t it suspicious that no matter what the circumstances, their current decision-making is correct and their past one wasn’t? It seems somewhat self-unaware. You have to tune down your self-estimate’s value if your self-estimate shows historical poor performance. | |
| ▲ | zingababba 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Every pot smoker is convinced it enhances their life while it ultimately just devolves them all into the exact same personality. |
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| ▲ | Sparkle-san 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Got any real sources? I've been a daily user for over 10 years and also have a spotless driving record. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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. | | |
| ▲ | Sparkle-san 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That's not quite the same though. The claim is that because I'm a habitual user, I'm always impaired. Which amounts to over 100k miles of impaired driving over the last decade. | | |
| ▲ | strken a day ago | parent | next [-] | | You're only expected to crash 500 or so times per 100 million miles as the base rate[0]. If you were impaired enough to have 2x or 3x the risk of crashing then it's entirely possible that you wouldn't crash, or that other factors would play a larger role. [0] https://www.friedmansimon.com/faqs/how-common-are-car-accide... | |
| ▲ | icefo a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You probably are compared to your baseline self (another comment goes more extensively on this subject) but maybe you have enough driving skills and common sense to minimize the risks somewhat. | |
| ▲ | michael1999 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Planning, good sense, and caution go a long way to compensate for physical impairment. Weed is different from booze in that booze increases risk taking, which makes driving such a danger. But that doesn’t mean weed doesn’t impair in some material way compared to baseline. | | |
| ▲ | QuercusMax a day ago | parent [-] | | Your average driver on alcohol: goes 100 miles per hour into a tree Your average driver on weed: drives 5 miles per hour to the taco bell drive thru |
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| ▲ | nh23423fefe a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Being freshly high is probably 2 quick beers, I'd think I was baseline after maybe 45 minutes. A massive edible might be 5, and I'd take like 3 hours I'd guess. 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. |
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| ▲ | rayiner a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | In the south people drive drunk over the legal alcohol limit all the time, most don’t crash. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. |
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| ▲ | n8cpdx 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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? | | |
| ▲ | 4q34qq a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I've been high basically for 15 years straight and was a professional athlete during that time in a sport that requires a lot of coordination. I know many other athletes that are heavy users, the majority of the best athletes I've ever known were actually. So how do you think that works? I don't trust anyone else on the road because all of you are comically bad drivers compared to someone like me. | |
| ▲ | yesbabyyes a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 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? Wait, how is mayo, vegan or not, related to dairy? | | |
| ▲ | n8cpdx 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Dairy is a category that depending on context may or may not include eggs. In this case the distinction doesn’t matter. Vegans wouldn’t have experience with strictly defined dairy or eggs. | |
| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | For some reason, people lump eggs in with dairy, presumably because they're unaware of the difference between hens and cows. You'd have to have quite a lot of detectable THC in your system to confuse the two, but here we are, people think that eggs are the same as milk. To be fair, my milkman delivers eggs as well as milk, cream, and butter, but they come from a totally different farm. |
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| ▲ | markeroon 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | cortesoft 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Don't we need baseline levels to see the association? | | |
| ▲ | Panzer04 a day ago | parent [-] | | You think 40% of the population is using? That seems like a pretty big reach to me. | | |
| ▲ | cortesoft a day ago | parent [-] | | I have no idea, but we should know the baseline if we want to know the effect |
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| ▲ | solumunus 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There’s also an association with having drank water and been in a car crash. This on its own can’t reasonably inform any opinions, more context is required. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > There’s also an association with having drank water and been in a car crash 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. | | |
| ▲ | ModernMech 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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 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. | |
| ▲ | solumunus 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 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 Yes, IF. That was my point. |
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| ▲ | markeroon 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Enough with the pedantry please: "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)". From https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e536 |
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| ▲ | hyperadvanced a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Source? Source? Got any source about me? Yeah well those statistics only deal with other people who aren’t me, so I guess you’re not really trusting the science :/ | |
| ▲ | ekianjo a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I've been a daily user for over 10 years and also have a spotless driving record. n sample size of 1 does not prove anything. | |
| ▲ | formerly_proven 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is very noticeable to basically everyone when you consume cannabis regularly. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't (I find cannabis unpleasant) but I don't think this is at all true. | |
| ▲ | pinkmuffinere 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think serious studies would be strongly preferred here, as compared to anecdotes or conjecture. I don’t even know if I disagree with your stance, it’s just an absence of data is not convincing. | |
| ▲ | throaway123123 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | not exactly. Depends how you consume it. Smoking, yes probably. The other forms of cannabis are less obvious. They are clearer highs without smell or smoke and much less burnout. | | |
| ▲ | badc0ffee a day ago | parent [-] | | Less coughing and effects of smoke, but the burnout is definitely due to daily THC, even if you vape it or do dabs. (To be clear, I don't think every daily user is a burnout.) |
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| ▲ | walletdrainer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Sure, but the problem isn’t whether or not a driver is impaired, but the degree to which they are impaired. |
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| ▲ | mrj 2 days ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | wiml a day ago | parent | next [-] | | There are some occupations where we aspire to that low level of risk. But it would mean that driving can't be an everyday activity for ordinary people. 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. | | |
| ▲ | mrj a day ago | parent [-] | | That's probably not the thing to tell a parent whose kid just made a dent and a black smudge on a MachE. I don't want to over index on the "think of the kids" argument, but we don't take driving seriously enough. Wikipedia says: 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.
The linked article is astounding. The attitude in this thread is astounding, too. Because driving is ubiquitous and necessary in most of the US, we've become too accepting of the problems. Yes, if you're hitting the vape pen every day you should absolutely not be driving. Jetlagged? Take an Uber. Stroke risk? Give us the keys. | | |
| ▲ | wiml a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Okay, that was insensitive of me. 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? | | |
| ▲ | Mawr a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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. | | |
| ▲ | MichaelNolan a day ago | parent [-] | | Per 1 billion vehicle-km the US has 6.9 deaths and the Netherlands has 4.7 deaths. That’s obviously better much but I wouldn’t call it “problem solved”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... (Wikipedia links to itf-oecd.org/ where those numbers come
From) | | |
| ▲ | rixed a day ago | parent [-] | | My guess is better road design means less miles driven by cars (as opposed to other, safer vehicles) and therefore fewer accidents overall, even if car crash statistics remain the same. |
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| ▲ | ElectronCharge a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Buy a Tesla with FSD. No, it’s not L5 autonomy, but it’s already safer than the average human driver…and autonomous cars will only get better. |
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| ▲ | Dylan16807 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The solution is to make the roads safer in general and/or reduce road use, not to take away people's keys for relatively tiny risk factors. 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. |
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| ▲ | sethammons a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 0% impaired? We know tired drivers are impaired. Should we require drivers to demonstrate 8hrs of sleep before operating a vehicle? What about people who do ok on less sleep? I think there are obvious issues with such a proposal and those issues transfer to THC usage. I would bet, if we could measure it, a large portion of fatal accidents would involve people who are not fully rested and had missed the 8hr target multiple times in the preceding week or two | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There's not really such a thing as 0% impaired. People fluctuate day to day, hour to hour, and have different baselines. | | |
| ▲ | mrj a day ago | parent [-] | | Sure.. I just was addressing the goal makes sense that drivers are not impaired. Of course nobody is perfect. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 a day ago | parent [-] | | A goal like that is far enough from what is actually possible that I think it's not a good goal. Maybe a slogan. |
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| ▲ | sallveburrpi 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Zero degree of impairment is only possible if we don’t have access to 2 tons of murder box.
I think the way cars dominate roads and our public spaces and how they are being used is inherently dangerous. I know this is going to get downvoted by people who cant imagine an alternative but it’s possible all the same. | | |
| ▲ | the_gastropod 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I borderline want a conscription-style policy, where young adults are required to live in Boston, Philadelphia, NYC, DC, Seattle, or Chicago, car-free for a year. Americans’ inability to even imagine a world where a car isn’t the way to get around is really a problem. | | |
| ▲ | nradov a day ago | parent [-] | | Some of those cities you listed have rather high death rates for young adults for reasons unrelated to cars. |
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| ▲ | Nasrudith a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't think you understand what "inherently dangerous" actually means. FYI murder requires intent, otherwise it is just manslaughter. Your indoctrination is showing by your turns of phrase. | | |
| ▲ | sallveburrpi a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Inherently means “qualities or traits that are intrinsic and fundamental, not added or external” 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 | |
| ▲ | rafabulsing a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Cars are inherently dangerous, though. They're multi ton hunks of metal moving at high speeds. That's dangerous from literally any angle you can imagine. 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. | | |
| ▲ | sokoloff a day ago | parent [-] | | So long as you’re also willing to label swimming pools, grapes, and crayons as, by definition, inherently dangerous on account of not being able to be made 100% safe, then I’ll at least grant you a level of consistency in your argument. | | |
| ▲ | rafabulsing a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Swimming pools are absolutely inherently dangerous. Why do you think lifeguards are a thing? 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. | | | |
| ▲ | Mawr a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Comparing "100% safe" vs the danger cars represent is so ridiculous I have to question if you're kidding? We're talking 40,000 people killed every year in the US alone on account of traffic accidents. And you're talking about grapes and crayons? 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. | | |
| ▲ | sokoloff a day ago | parent [-] | | GP is the one who argued “not 100% safe” as evidence of inherently unsafe. 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. | | |
| ▲ | rafabulsing a day ago | parent [-] | | Make the threshold "won't kill you 99.9% of the time, even if you have little to no training at that specific activity" then. Is that specific enough for you to engage meaningfully with the conversation at hand, and show why you think driving is at the same side of this threshold as eating grapes or using crayons? |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | Mawr a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Also, my son was just hit by a driver while he was on a bike and in the bike lane. 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. |
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