Road Safety Experts Concerned by Cannabis

Road safety officials are expressing some concern over the loosening marijuana laws, fearing that with greater access and acceptability comes an increase in fatal crashes. This is a worthy endeavor, to be sure. But it is not an easily answered topic. I think the truth of the matter is that, while there aren’t many hard rules defining stoned driving, the nature of the substance itself doesn’t really lend itself to fatal crashes, certainly not in the same way we’ve seen with alcohol. I sympathize with the officials tasked with this and I hope they come to an equitable solution. Reading this did spark some thoughts, however.

Notable quotes:

“I’m very concerned, because I feel that we’re painting the plane as we’re flying it,” says Jake Nelson, director of traffic safety, advocacy and research for AAA. “When we were at this stage of the game with alcohol, starting to pass laws, we knew a lot more about how alcohol affected driving performance, crash risks and how that changed with different concentrations of alcohol in a person’s body.”

“The research is mixed on how cannabis affects driving performance. Though marijuana can slow decision-making and decrease peripheral vision, drivers under the influence of marijuana tend to drive more slowly and less aggressively, says Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “But if you mix it with alcohol, it has a stimulative effect,” he says. “It makes reckless drivers. It makes drivers take a lot of chances. That’s the biggest concern.”

So, really, it’s alcohol (again) that is the problem (no shit, right?).

Look, I am in no way implying that you should get baked and drive a car. But there is more to the equation than meets the eye. It is the level of inebriation that should dictate limitations. With booze, a .08 blood alcohol content is a standard measurement that has proved a pretty solid benchmark of impairment. Whether you’re a 100 pound college woman or a 300 pound linebacker, the alcohol measurement is a percentage of alcohol in your total blood volume. The college woman has less blood volume, hence less alcohol will put her past that .08 mark. Similarly, the linebacker has more blood, necessitating more alcohol to hit the threshhold.

It just doesn’t work that way with marijuana. I honestly don’t know how to go about getting a standardized yardstick by which one could measure cannabis impairment, and it realistically can’t be blood volume or even a urine test. Given that marijuana lingers in your body for weeks (and a “high” will last only a few hours), a chronic cannabis user will undoubtedly have a higher count of pot biomarkers; yet, that gives absolutely zero indication of impairment.

Until a true, scientifically sound, on-the-spot pot intoxication test comes along (if it’s even possible), we really don’t have much more to go on other than anecdotal evidence and the scant studies on stoned driving that have been done. The sample size of the data is not large, but the results seem to be consistent: chronic users often show no signs of impairment behind the wheel and novice users overwhelmingly tend to drive very slow and are non-aggressive.

Yes, that can still lead to dangerous conditions and shouldn’t be encouraged. However, the perils of drunk driving are well known. I think just about everyone I know has been touched by some tragedy caused by driving drunk. And the stakes are almost always a lot higher. Alcohol wreaks havoc on motor skills and has a powerful tendancy to increase aggressiveness. Increased aggressiveness means faster driving.

You be the judge. Who would you rather have on the roads? The stoned guy driving 20 miles below the speed limit with his hazards on or the drunk who drives well over the speed limit, is likely in a heightened state of aggression, and has lost most of his fine motor skills? Obviously, I don’t want either of these people on the road, but I don’t think anyone really thinks that we’re ever going to get impaired drivers off our roads completely. The issue, then, is in looking at the potential for destruction/harm.

In my estimation (when it comes to impaired driving), alcohol is like a gun and weed is like a pocket knife. Sure, they can both lead to harmful situations, but with alcohol, the likelihood and severity of said harm skyrockets. I don’t want a free pass for stoned driving. If you’re endangering your fellow citizens, you need to be taken off the streets. But I grow weary of all these people suddenly showing up to the podium to decry legalizing weed, citing increased traffic accidents.

As I have said many times before: that argument will only have teeth when those speaking it are trying to prohibit alcohol as well. Critics are quick to cite survey data showing an increase in the presence of marijuana in the blood of crash victims. Yet, what they conveniently fail to mention is that, in most of those cases where pot was discovered, there was also alcohol or some other substance found as well.

I also think that increased weed acceptance might actually lessen the amount of fatal road crashes. Mixing weed and alcohol (in large enough quantities) is a formula for disaster. I have been drunk and stoned at the same time and it is one of my least favorite places to be, and that is what makes me think it could lower fatal crashes. Generally speaking, people who like getting stoned aren’t big drinkers. With legal weed gaining traction, it likely means that there are less drunk people to worry about.

These are just my opinions, of course. Please be safe and don’t drive if you’re drunk or high. Instead, let’s stay home and ponder why marijuana is still federally prohibited and alcohol is legal in every state, despite causing fatalities everyday.