I have heard the statement that people who are high on pot are almost as safe a driver as they are sober. This also agrees with my experiance, I’ve driven high before, and I felt like I was driving acceptably. I’ve always heard that the diffrence between drunk drivers and stoned drivers is that someone who is stoned think they are more impared then they really are, and so overcompisate by a large degree, while people who are drunk think they are driving MUCH better then they really are.
I guess my GQ is: How does doing pot effect your driving? How and why does it affect you diffently then alcohol?
I’ve never been much of a pot smoker, when I was in High School I both drove drunk and drove stoned and honestly neither bothered me once. However there were definitely times I was high that driving would have been extremely dangerous, people have different experiences with marijuana and a few times I was almost in a semi-distorted reality type state. There were also times when I was so drunk I couldn’t walk from A to B, let alone drive; but the times I did drive while “legally” impaired I still felt of sound mind and soundly in control of my faculties.
I think driving in either state is likely a piss-poor idea. You are less likely to speed while stoned on pot. Either is safer than driving while the acid is kicking in. :eek:
At least onestudy suggests that stoned drivers are twice as likely as sober drivers to be involved in a fatal car accident. Though not nearly as dangerous as alcohol, it’s still by no means a safe state in which to be driving, if the finding of this study are accurate.
I have driven while stoned (not wasted) a few times in the distant past.
My reaction times were better than normal (I later “proved” this with one of those reaction testing applications).
However, my judgement was way out. I became hellishly paranoid about police cars, and eventually I made a bad overtaking move that nearly killed everyone involved, and I stopped doing it altogether.
The study I’ve always heard (sorry, no cite) is that infrequent users of marijuana drive worse while stoned than sober, though not as bad as driving drunk. Heavy pot smokers, on the other hand, actually drove better while stoned.
It makes sense, because heavy smokers get high so often, stoned is just a “normal” state for them.
Yes, I had to take a DUI class once. The instuctor basicaly said the same thing. All your attention is placed on that police car, meanwhile you don’t notice little Suzzie crossing the street on her tricycle and BAM! There you sit in jail for vehicular manslaughter.
To tell you the truth. If I wasn’t so worried about the consequences of getting pulled over while under the influence; I think I could drive perfectly safely too. I know for a fact that I’m a better driver at .10 BAC than seemingly 50% of regular drivers out there! Jeez!
Yep, that would be me. I haven’t touched the stuff in a good 15 years or so. But I’m sure if I did, people would probably be passing me on the sidewalk.
I did a paper back in high school on the problems of drug use in the “transportation” industry – truck drivers, train engineers, airline pilots, etc. One tidbit I came across was a study in which 10 airline pilots were given a series of tests in a flight simulator. First they established a baseline performance for each. Next, they tested each one of them after a recreational joint. Finally, they tested each in the simulator 24 hours after the joint. In the final test, eight out of ten “crashed”, and one missed the runway altogether. Now I grant that flying an airliner is a far more complex process than driving a car, however…
Sounds reasonable. If you’re not totally comfortable with the stoned state, then it’s best to stay sober. I guess the drawbacks of driving stoned would be:
Impaired short-term memory. What was it I saw in the mirror two seconds ago?
Distorted time perception. Is that gap in the traffic long enough for me to pull out in?
Too much sensory input; a widening of the brain’s input filters can make it hard to discriminate between important and trivial information. Look at all the pretty lights! Some of them are important (headlights, traffic lights etc.), others should be ignored (street lamps, shop signs etc.). They’re all equally pretty when stoned.
I’ve never driven drunk, being of the first generations* that was taught from the start that it’s a highly irresponsible thing to do. I don’t even drink a 2% shandy if I’m driving a few hours later. I figure if I feel even the smallest effects of the alcohol, then my driving is impaired. And if the alcohol has no effect, then what’s the point of drinking it in the first place? Apart from this one time, years ago - I had a pint of 2% beer/lemonade shandy and then drove 1/4 mile 2 hours later. I was way under the legal limit, of course, but I definitely felt impaired.
Driving drunk was almost socially acceptable (but not legal) 30 years ago, and lots of people did it. If you were in a collision, the chances are you’d be drunk, the other driver would be drunk, and the ambulance crew that picked you up would be drunk also.
Slow drivers are not necessarily safer drivers. Just the other day, I was trying to merge behind a guy who was going 20 under. Considering the pace of the rest of traffic, I considered his out-of-sync speed a “deadly pace.” The same could be said, of course, of someone merging too fast.
The best thing to do is keep yourself as clear-headed as possible behind the wheel. Whatever it takes to get you there is fine with me, but if you’ve become dependent upon a substance to keep yourself in a “normal” state, you might want to work on that.
My Dad frightened me with stories of driving back home with Mum and friends after being in the pub and waking up the next day thinking about how drunk he’d been while driving :rolleyes:
They admit this is in no way scientific, but they have a guy take a driving test, then smoke up and take the test again. He performed better stoned than he did sober.
They also point out that while marijuana surfaces in more auto accidents, it’s because the chemical stays in the body much longer than it has any effect. That makes figures surrounded auto accidents and marijuana misleading, as there’s no indication in those records whether the person was still high, or merely had smokes some pot in the last month.
A few years ago, I watched a trial on court TV. (I once linked to it on this board. If you guys really want to see it, I’ll try to dig it up again.)
Basically what happened is that a kid ran a stop sign and crashed into a van, killing four or five children. At the hospital, his blood was tested and found to contain THC. The kid claimed he had been at a party more than twenty-four hours ago in which he had smoked marijuana, but he was not impaired at the time.
The prosecution’s argument was that* any* THC in the system makes you legally impaired. Unlike alcohol, there is no threshold. A man may be able to drink one beer and have a BAC low enough to drive legally, but the same is not true with a puff or two of marijuana. The kid was convicted.
This depends on exactly what was tested for. If it was cannabinoids–the metabolic byproducts of marijuana use–then they’re correct. However, if they were directly testing for the presence of THC, that’s a different story. THC is, as we all know, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. It’s metabolized out of the bloodstream fairly quickly; ~3 hours or so. So, if they were testing for THC, it can be definitively concluded that the driver had smoked shortly before the accident, and that he was still under the influence at the time. Unfortunately, the articles I’ve been able to find don’t give this critical detail.
Naah. I’ve done all three. I’m safer by quantum leaps on both skill and judgment on acid than on alcohol, and to a lesser extent more so than on pot. I’m more patient and more relaxed than when sober, but large-picture judgments (planning, keeping mind on going to Cincinnati and not Cabo San Lucas) are more questionable.
