Ha ha ha! Do not use contractions! Hilarious. Oh man, I love the Anecdote Zone.
Seriously now, Cartooniverse, I’m sorry your camera was stolen.
MeanOldLady, this and your subsequent posts win the thread. You cracked me up. Like MsWhatsit, I love The Anecdote Zone. Funny stuff. Dio is your muse.
If I have to defend Dio’s position here, so be it. I’m going to outright state that pot-smokers have less driving accidents than those who drive “straight”. If it is such an outlandish claim, I’m sure there’ll be a barrage of cites proving differently in a matter of moments.
Oh no. I fully believe this to be the truth. In the same way that people who drive a manual transmission with their feet have less driving accidents than those who drive “straight.” It’s not that it isn’t a ridiculous thing to do and patently unsafe…it’s just that there’s less people out there attempting it so there are less accidents.
Oh…did you mean on a percentage basis? That, like, 7% of pot smokers get into an accident while 14% of the regular population does? Yeah, no. I highly doubt that.
They say that bad actors play drunk people by making them act drunk. The secret is to portray drunk people as attempting to act sober.
And you are welcome to doubt it. Meanwhile you have 2 - yes, 2! - people telling you from their own experience that driving under the influence of pot does not inhibit driving ability in any significant manner, and your counter-experience is… what?
Seconded.
How about the counter-experience that people who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol are notoriously bad judges of the degree to which they are under the influence?
I’m prepared to buy that people who are stoned think they’re safer drivers.
Two? Well crap man. I can’t beat that. I’m just one person.
I guess I’ll have to concede.
Oh, by the way, based upon my personal experiences of my own body, 100% of the human population has penises. Just thought I’d let you know that the biology books are wrong.
Driving once while under the influence of pot and coming back unscathed might be deemed lucky, so how many times would it have to be done to satisfy those in doubt?
Here’s a third person saying “Yes”… and “No”.
I have plenty of past experience with cannabis and with driving, and I never had an accident while driving stoned.
On the other hand, I also know that, in my experience, smoking weed certainly did impair my ability to drive a car. I know this because: 1) I moderated my intake prior to hitting the road because I knew otherwise I would have problems, and 2) once on the road, I drove with a hyper-vigilance because I knew I had to compensate for my stonedness. I also knew these two precautions were necessary because, 3) there have been many times when I was simply too fried to even think about getting behind the wheel. Good times…
In my experience, though, driving with a hangover is much more problematic than either having a couple drinks or a couple puffs and then hitting the road. You get the hazy dissociation from reality like when you’re drunk, but no “feel good” chemicals racing around your brain to perk you up and help you focus on the task at hand.
We’re just considering the sources.
Ok, my post as my cite. From my limited use of medical grade pot:
Hit #1: nothing
Hit #2: buzzed, a little dizzy
Hit #3: high, I really like colored lights, have to concentrate in order to walk, I won’t remember this tomorrow
Hit #4: Fucked up, can’t walk in a straight line, can’t pour water into a glass without considerable effort, TV seems to be in half-second stop action, can’t follow a movie anyway, don’t remember anything from 15 minutes ago.
I’ve never been stoned in a situation that requires any kind of intellectual or ethical judgment so I can’t say if I’d be more likely to steal stuff. But if I were an instructor I’d be incensed (heh) to find out a student was wasting a slot in one of my classes by showing up in a condition that would compromise any benefits he might get from it.
I’ve gone one of them there penis thingys as well, so make that 200%.
Dude…don’t bogart!
Well, I just read an article by Mann RE et al (Traffic Inj Prev. 2010 Apr;11(2):115-22) in which the authors conducted a survey of approximately 7000 (Canadian) adults and found that the odds ratio for collision involvement among drivers who had driven after cannabis use versus drivers who had never done so was 1.84 (notably, the odds ratio for drivers who drove after alcohol consumption versus drivers who never had was only 1.34).
Also found an Australian study (Lenne MG et al, Accid Anal Prev. 2010 May;42(3):859-66). Money quote, from the article’s conclusions:
Of the cites in the paragraph above, Ramaekers et al (publishing in Human Psychopharmacology) tried three doses of THC (0, 100, and 200 micrograms/kg) with vs. without alcohol and found that both non-zero doses of THC negatively affected driving performance; according to the abstract, “Performance deficits were minor after alcohol and moderate after both THC doses.” I can’t get into the Robbe article at the moment. The Ronen article (in Accident Analysis and Prevention) had a very small sample size - only 14 - but nonetheless concluded, among other things, that “a moderate dose of alcohol (0.05% BAC) appeared to impair subjects’ ability to drive at a similar level as that observed after smoking the lower level of THC.”
This seems pretty clear cut to me. Marijuana use is associated with decreased driving speed but increased speed variability, increased variability of lateral position (ie, swerving), decreased reaction time, and increased risk of collison.
Well, just remember, when it gets passed to you, hold it in as long as you can to get the full effect.
The study I cited showed that there was no difference in likelihood of accidents between people who are stoned and people who are not stoned.
You know, that’s kind of like a Christian pointing to the Bible when asked for proof of the existence of God.
And storyteller0910 cited two studies that say otherwise.
Moreover, your original claim was not about driving ability alone. It was about the impairment of cognitive ability and motor skills. The study that you cited fully acknowledged that drivers are impaired while they’re on marijuana, even as it posited that they take corrective action while under the influence. So even if we grant that your cite is superior to the ones mentioned by storyteller0910, the fact remains: your own citation proves your claim to be wrong.