Posted on 02/25/2014 2:31:10 PM PST by BenLurkin
The study draws its conclusions from statistics on more than 23,500 drivers who died within one hour of a crash between 1999 and 2010. The toxicology tests were performed on victims from six states including: California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and West Virginia. While alcohol related traffic fatalities remained steady at 40% throughout the decade, drug related deaths soared from 16% in 1999 to a whopping 28% in 2010.
Significantly, the study cites marijuana use as the leading culprit for the swelling number of drug related traffic deaths, contributing to 12 percent of 2010 crashes. This represents a 300% increase compared with four percent in 1999. The study qualifies the pot statistics by emphasizing that because marijuana stays in the blood for up to one week, therefore, 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Meanwhile some states are rushing into “medical” marijuana.
To really mess the statistics up, there’d have to be a lot of such cases. And my guess is not many people are killed by sober drivers while stopped at a red light.
Do you think this article would make people more inclined to allow the federal government more power and authority if they promised to stop it?
“To the best of my knowledge, there is no reliable test for determining the level of actual impairment from marijuana at a given moment.”
Yeah, I think the best test is just a regular old field sobriety test, to judge their reflexes, balance, etc. You can tell from that if they are impaired, but it is very subjective, and it can’t tell you if the impairment is from marijuana or something else.
The problem is not just a specific situation, but the way they categorize their statistics. A fatality is “drug related” if anyone, even the victim, or a non-driving passenger is found to have drugs in their system. Same for “alcohol related”. If a guy who had 3 drinks and is walking home gets run over by a distracted texter, it is said to be an “alcohol related” fatality. If a sober driver with a stoned passenger gets hit by another sober driver, and someone dies, it’s a “drug related” fatality.
Also, we have no way of knowing how much that sloppy approach affects the statistics, without delving into every case they accounted for and recalculating all the statistics properly.
That makes sense.
Placemark.
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