7 ms·

It's also not safe to drive while tired, on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs), while texting, while on the phone, while not looking at th

It's also not safe to drive while tired, on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs), while texting, while on the phone, while not looking at the road, with glasses (they could fall off and you'd be blind), with a heart condition, etc etc. I think it's safe to assume you drive very often with things that affect your driving. If pot is proven to not affect your driving to a measurable degree, then the only thing that is different between that and random over the counter medication is one is called pot.

NOSHSHNACKERS 10y ago
how about angry - really really really angry.. that is not a good way to drive.
rudolf0 10y ago
People really, really shouldn't be driving under those conditions, either.
kdamken 10y ago
Yes, all those things affect your ability to drive. You shouldn't text and drive, but people do it, etc. I would say being stoned is a lot worse than the other things you listed though: - When you're tired, you can have a cup of coffee and wake up a bit and regain some of that focus. You can't drink a red bull and suddenly be way less high. - If you send a text or two while driving, you're not paying attention to the road for a few moments (which is admittedly still crazy dangerous). If you drive stoned - you're driving less safely the entire time you're driving. The combination of the two is even worse. - Having a heart condition doesn't mean you're going to necessarily have a heart attack every time you drive - there's just a higher risk that something might happen. Even in that case, you may be able to stop/pull over. Once again, if you drive stoned - you're driving less safely the entire time you're driving. - You can have a backup pair of glasses, you can pull over, etc. But my main point - just because there are other things that can make the already insanely dangerous activity of driving more risky, doesn't make driving high less bad.
- jerkstate 10y ago
  > - When you're tired, you can have a cup of coffee and wake up a bit and regain some of that focus. You can't drink a red bull and suddenly be way less high. Actually, there are terpenes in cannabis that mitigate many of the confusing effects, which can be found in foods such as black peppercorns and pine nuts. Pliny the Elder wrote about this; see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3165946/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3165946/ So yes, there are ways to get "less high." Not advocating that driving while high/texting/tired is a good idea, just trying to enlighten about some of the fascinating science behind Cannabis.
  - kdamken 10y ago
    This is really interesting - thanks for the link. I'd be curious to see how effective that is in real life.
- Retric 10y ago
  Stoned is ambiguous though. Nobody thinks it's ok to drive with a BAC of 0.4 but 0.04 is generally considered legal. The question becomes what's Stoned? Detectable is not a reasonable limit nor is can't stand up.
  - ssmoot 10y ago
    > Nobody thinks it's ok to drive with a BAC of 0.4 but 0.04 is generally considered legal. Not sure how you come to that conclusion. I think it's reasonable to assume it's legal because most people (including me) feel it's fine. I'm much more concerned about distracted driving generally.
    - Retric 10y ago
      A BAC of 0.04 is measurably impaired though. Mostly in terms of higher brain functions and reaction times making it both less obvious and often within a persons 'normal' range. Something to remember is people generally drink late in the day. So, the accident statistics mix drinking and tired data. Tired driving makes things far worse, but it's hard to test for as accidents and being pulled over both tend to wake people up. Pot on the other hand is more often a daytime drug which is going to mess with the statistics.
Someone1234 10y ago
> on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs) I assume you mean any medication which may impair you. There are lot's of medications which people should take before driving, like anti-seizure, antipsychotics, heart control, blood sugar control, and so on. It will typically tell you on the label if it is safe to take and operate heavy machinery. Although I'd always suggest taking it the first time while not doing so regardless, just in case of an unexpected side effect or adverse reaction.
- justizin 10y ago
  > There are lot's of medications which people should take before driving, like anti-seizure, antipsychotics, heart control, blood sugar control, and so on. anxiety, depression, etc... there's some overlap here, some people use cannabis to prevent/control seizures, to treat anxiety or depression, and don't feel side effects. The experience of the common person who has tried cannabis once or twice and turned away isn't necessarily anything like the experience of someone who benefits from it. You wouldn't say that a person with ADHD shouldn't drive on ADHD meds, but for anyone else, that would be effectively like driving on cocaine. Some people should, in fact, not be driving while not under the influence of cannabis or another treatment for conditions that could make them unsafe drivers.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    > You wouldn't say that a person with ADHD shouldn't drive on ADHD meds, but for anyone else, that would be effectively like driving on cocaine. I thought it was pretty interesting actually, the big chart in the linked article suggests that stimulants actually lower the likelihood of an accident compared to a baseline.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      I once had to drive myself few hundred kilometers back home after a discharge from a psych ward - i was taking some new variation of activisation pill intended to make me less apathetic. While usually I am super careful, will yield/brake preventively to avoid an accident (haven't had one yet - in big part thanks to mindfulness and survival instict) - in the begining that medicine just threw it out the window. I quite literally YOLO'd head on with an 18-wheeler because my brain just went OVERTAKE NOW, BITCH. (did not crash, it was just incredibly stupid and tight) Took me some time to adjust and stop being riddiculously reckless. Same with nausea suppression pills for travel. I was once made to drive after taking one. I'd venture to say that the lower likelyhood of an accident while on cocaine would come from most people that not pay any goddamn attention to anything, frantically scanning everything: the road, traffic, road shoulder, pedestrains, etc, etc
marcoperaza 10y ago
Your analogy is terrible. Marijuana is not comparable to anything you can buy over the counter. Unless you chug a bottle of cough syrup and then drive, which is just as illegal as driving drunk or stoned.
- deleted 10y ago
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- saganus 10y ago
  Actually I think there are a lot of things over the counter that affect you more than marijuana. Have you taken Dramamine (the regular drowsy version)? If I take 1 pill I can sort of keep awake but I wouldn't try to drive unless it was an emergency. Taking 2 pills makes me so drowsy that I would not drive safely by any chance. Those are the recommended dosages by the way, so no need to consume the whole bottle or box of that like with cough syrup. And that's just one of the myriad of different things you can get over the counter that can easily impair your driving. So yes, I think the analogy is right to a degree (like all analogies). Even though marijuana does definitely change the way you perceive things and thus driving might not be something recommended to do, the GP's point is that a lot of people already drive under the influence of a lot of other substances, some of them potentially much more dangerous than marijuana. Obviously part of the problem is that different people will react differently to marijuana, so like stated elsewhere in the thread, a regular user (like a functional alcoholic) might be able to drive "ok" and have no accidents but someone that is trying it for the first time, getting a particularly potent batch and then trying to drive is going to increase the chances of an accident greatly. That doesn't mean I condone being fucked up (with whatever) and driving, but the GP has a point in that we are already living in a world where people are driving and doing other dangerous things while under the influence of "stuff". That also explains partly why driving is so dangerous and why so many people die each year from a driving-related incident. Edit: So maybe we shouldn't be single-ing out marijuana as "the" bad stuff that causes accidents while behind the wheel and take a more "big-picture" kind of view. One of the reasons why self-driving cars are a good idea.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
scarecrowbob 10y ago
I don't really mess with cannabis any more, but I think that a lot of folks have strange ideas about how it affects people. If my only experience with the drug were the first couple of times in college where we were taking bong hits, then yeah, I can see why people would be shocked that you could drive in that state. It took a me a couple of years before I discovered that most of the folks (especially the folks in their 50s - 60s I hang out with) really are just getting a little bit at a time. It's possible (and I think for many long-term users, more normal) to have only enough to modify your mood and outlook on events without becoming glued-to-the-couch high. Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D
- georgemcbay 10y ago
  "Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D" True, which points to the fact that it would be useful to have a well-understood BAC-like scale for marijuana usage, especially as the drug becomes more and more legal to use. Clearly there's a difference between having one beer and driving an hour later compared to getting behind the wheel while nearly passed-out drunk. Lots of people have a decent approximate sense of what 0.08 BAC is when it comes to alcohol consumption, but everyone who is "high" is just "high" without some sort of well-defined scale.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - oxide 10y ago
    tolerance comes into account, which is why comparing driving on marijuana and driving on alcohol is akin to comparing apples and oranges. they're entirely, exponentially, infinitely different.
    - pklausler 10y ago
      As a mathematician, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on "exponentially" and "infinitely" there.
dimino 10y ago
> If pot is proven to not affect your driving to a measurable degree What??
- corin_ 10y ago
  The very second sentence of the article reads: "And after adjusting for age, gender, race and alcohol use, drivers who tested positive for marijuana were no more likely to crash than who had not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving." Edit: Just in case in the future anyone comes across my comment out of context of this thread, I'd like to add that without seeing further research I'm not personally convinced by that statement.
  - ssmoot 10y ago
    Since testing positive just means that you might have used anytime in the past month or so, that's not meaningful. The study linked in the article confirms that yes, according to the evidence seen, marijuana significantly impairs driving ability, especially among casual users (to the surprise of no one whose actually used it I'm sure).
    - deleted 10y ago
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- Davidp00 10y ago
  From the article And after adjusting for age, gender, race and alcohol use, drivers who tested positive for marijuana were no more likely to crash than who had not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving.
  - dimino 10y ago
    That's not what that means, though. All that says is that testing positive for marijuana doesn't provide a meaningful measurement of impairment. It does not mean pot doesn't impact your driving.
ssmoot 10y ago
I feel like you didn't even read the article. Here's the summary of the linked study: > Differences in study designs frequently account for inconsistencies in results between studies. Participant-selection bias and confounding factors attenuate ostensible cannabis effects, but the association with MVA often retains significance. Evidence suggests recent smoking and/or blood THC concentrations 2-5 ng/mL are associated with substantial driving impairment, particularly in occasional smokers. Future cannabis-and-driving research should emphasize challenging tasks, such as divided attention, and include occasional and chronic daily cannabis smokers. Suggesting that taking a couple Tylenol is as dangerous as smoking anything (even tobacco for occasional users) before/while driving is ridiculous.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I believe that comparison with an over-the-counter antihistamine, such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl, Dramamine), Fexofenadine (Allegra), or Cetirizine (Zyrtec) would be more appropriate. Some of the people that I know take drugs to treat their allergies far more often than analgesics for headaches. Here is a thought experiment. You are a passenger in a car, chained to the seat. Would you rather the driver drink shots of ethanol, smoke marijuana cigarettes, swallow antihistamine pills, or log in to Twitter/Facebook via mobile phone? Assume that you wish to minimize both risk of death and the severity of nonfatal injuries.
  - function_seven 10y ago
    Very good thought experiment. I would choose marijuana over any of the others in a heartbeat. The only exception would be if the driver is not a regular user. In that case, probably the antihistamines.
    - genericpseudo 10y ago
      Cetirizine and fexofenadine (most 2G antihistamines, in fact) have no significant sedative effect.
      - 10y ago

NOSHSHNACKERS 10y ago

how about angry - really really really angry.. that is not a good way to drive.

rudolf0 10y ago

People really, really shouldn't be driving under those conditions, either.

kdamken 10y ago

Yes, all those things affect your ability to drive. You shouldn't text and drive, but people do it, etc. I would say being stoned is a lot worse than the other things you listed though: - When you're tired, you can have a cup of coffee and wake up a bit and regain some of that focus. You can't drink a red bull and suddenly be way less high. - If you send a text or two while driving, you're not paying attention to the road for a few moments (which is admittedly still crazy dangerous). If you drive stoned - you're driving less safely the entire time you're driving. The combination of the two is even worse. - Having a heart condition doesn't mean you're going to necessarily have a heart attack every time you drive - there's just a higher risk that something might happen. Even in that case, you may be able to stop/pull over. Once again, if you drive stoned - you're driving less safely the entire time you're driving. - You can have a backup pair of glasses, you can pull over, etc. But my main point - just because there are other things that can make the already insanely dangerous activity of driving more risky, doesn't make driving high less bad.

jerkstate 10y ago
> - When you're tired, you can have a cup of coffee and wake up a bit and regain some of that focus. You can't drink a red bull and suddenly be way less high. Actually, there are terpenes in cannabis that mitigate many of the confusing effects, which can be found in foods such as black peppercorns and pine nuts. Pliny the Elder wrote about this; see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3165946/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3165946/ So yes, there are ways to get "less high." Not advocating that driving while high/texting/tired is a good idea, just trying to enlighten about some of the fascinating science behind Cannabis.
- kdamken 10y ago
  This is really interesting - thanks for the link. I'd be curious to see how effective that is in real life.
Retric 10y ago
Stoned is ambiguous though. Nobody thinks it's ok to drive with a BAC of 0.4 but 0.04 is generally considered legal. The question becomes what's Stoned? Detectable is not a reasonable limit nor is can't stand up.
- ssmoot 10y ago
  > Nobody thinks it's ok to drive with a BAC of 0.4 but 0.04 is generally considered legal. Not sure how you come to that conclusion. I think it's reasonable to assume it's legal because most people (including me) feel it's fine. I'm much more concerned about distracted driving generally.
  - Retric 10y ago
    A BAC of 0.04 is measurably impaired though. Mostly in terms of higher brain functions and reaction times making it both less obvious and often within a persons 'normal' range. Something to remember is people generally drink late in the day. So, the accident statistics mix drinking and tired data. Tired driving makes things far worse, but it's hard to test for as accidents and being pulled over both tend to wake people up. Pot on the other hand is more often a daytime drug which is going to mess with the statistics.

Someone1234 10y ago

> on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs) I assume you mean any medication which may impair you. There are lot's of medications which people should take before driving, like anti-seizure, antipsychotics, heart control, blood sugar control, and so on. It will typically tell you on the label if it is safe to take and operate heavy machinery. Although I'd always suggest taking it the first time while not doing so regardless, just in case of an unexpected side effect or adverse reaction.

justizin 10y ago
> There are lot's of medications which people should take before driving, like anti-seizure, antipsychotics, heart control, blood sugar control, and so on. anxiety, depression, etc... there's some overlap here, some people use cannabis to prevent/control seizures, to treat anxiety or depression, and don't feel side effects. The experience of the common person who has tried cannabis once or twice and turned away isn't necessarily anything like the experience of someone who benefits from it. You wouldn't say that a person with ADHD shouldn't drive on ADHD meds, but for anyone else, that would be effectively like driving on cocaine. Some people should, in fact, not be driving while not under the influence of cannabis or another treatment for conditions that could make them unsafe drivers.
- CPLX 10y ago
  > You wouldn't say that a person with ADHD shouldn't drive on ADHD meds, but for anyone else, that would be effectively like driving on cocaine. I thought it was pretty interesting actually, the big chart in the linked article suggests that stimulants actually lower the likelihood of an accident compared to a baseline.
  - emp_zealoth 10y ago
    I once had to drive myself few hundred kilometers back home after a discharge from a psych ward - i was taking some new variation of activisation pill intended to make me less apathetic. While usually I am super careful, will yield/brake preventively to avoid an accident (haven't had one yet - in big part thanks to mindfulness and survival instict) - in the begining that medicine just threw it out the window. I quite literally YOLO'd head on with an 18-wheeler because my brain just went OVERTAKE NOW, BITCH. (did not crash, it was just incredibly stupid and tight) Took me some time to adjust and stop being riddiculously reckless. Same with nausea suppression pills for travel. I was once made to drive after taking one. I'd venture to say that the lower likelyhood of an accident while on cocaine would come from most people that not pay any goddamn attention to anything, frantically scanning everything: the road, traffic, road shoulder, pedestrains, etc, etc

marcoperaza 10y ago

Your analogy is terrible. Marijuana is not comparable to anything you can buy over the counter. Unless you chug a bottle of cough syrup and then drive, which is just as illegal as driving drunk or stoned.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
saganus 10y ago
Actually I think there are a lot of things over the counter that affect you more than marijuana. Have you taken Dramamine (the regular drowsy version)? If I take 1 pill I can sort of keep awake but I wouldn't try to drive unless it was an emergency. Taking 2 pills makes me so drowsy that I would not drive safely by any chance. Those are the recommended dosages by the way, so no need to consume the whole bottle or box of that like with cough syrup. And that's just one of the myriad of different things you can get over the counter that can easily impair your driving. So yes, I think the analogy is right to a degree (like all analogies). Even though marijuana does definitely change the way you perceive things and thus driving might not be something recommended to do, the GP's point is that a lot of people already drive under the influence of a lot of other substances, some of them potentially much more dangerous than marijuana. Obviously part of the problem is that different people will react differently to marijuana, so like stated elsewhere in the thread, a regular user (like a functional alcoholic) might be able to drive "ok" and have no accidents but someone that is trying it for the first time, getting a particularly potent batch and then trying to drive is going to increase the chances of an accident greatly. That doesn't mean I condone being fucked up (with whatever) and driving, but the GP has a point in that we are already living in a world where people are driving and doing other dangerous things while under the influence of "stuff". That also explains partly why driving is so dangerous and why so many people die each year from a driving-related incident. Edit: So maybe we shouldn't be single-ing out marijuana as "the" bad stuff that causes accidents while behind the wheel and take a more "big-picture" kind of view. One of the reasons why self-driving cars are a good idea.
- sokoloff 10y ago

scarecrowbob 10y ago

I don't really mess with cannabis any more, but I think that a lot of folks have strange ideas about how it affects people. If my only experience with the drug were the first couple of times in college where we were taking bong hits, then yeah, I can see why people would be shocked that you could drive in that state. It took a me a couple of years before I discovered that most of the folks (especially the folks in their 50s - 60s I hang out with) really are just getting a little bit at a time. It's possible (and I think for many long-term users, more normal) to have only enough to modify your mood and outlook on events without becoming glued-to-the-couch high. Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D

georgemcbay 10y ago
"Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D" True, which points to the fact that it would be useful to have a well-understood BAC-like scale for marijuana usage, especially as the drug becomes more and more legal to use. Clearly there's a difference between having one beer and driving an hour later compared to getting behind the wheel while nearly passed-out drunk. Lots of people have a decent approximate sense of what 0.08 BAC is when it comes to alcohol consumption, but everyone who is "high" is just "high" without some sort of well-defined scale.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- oxide 10y ago
  tolerance comes into account, which is why comparing driving on marijuana and driving on alcohol is akin to comparing apples and oranges. they're entirely, exponentially, infinitely different.
  - pklausler 10y ago
    As a mathematician, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on "exponentially" and "infinitely" there.

dimino 10y ago

> If pot is proven to not affect your driving to a measurable degree What??

corin_ 10y ago
The very second sentence of the article reads: "And after adjusting for age, gender, race and alcohol use, drivers who tested positive for marijuana were no more likely to crash than who had not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving." Edit: Just in case in the future anyone comes across my comment out of context of this thread, I'd like to add that without seeing further research I'm not personally convinced by that statement.
- ssmoot 10y ago
  Since testing positive just means that you might have used anytime in the past month or so, that's not meaningful. The study linked in the article confirms that yes, according to the evidence seen, marijuana significantly impairs driving ability, especially among casual users (to the surprise of no one whose actually used it I'm sure).
  - deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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Davidp00 10y ago
From the article And after adjusting for age, gender, race and alcohol use, drivers who tested positive for marijuana were no more likely to crash than who had not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving.
- dimino 10y ago
  That's not what that means, though. All that says is that testing positive for marijuana doesn't provide a meaningful measurement of impairment. It does not mean pot doesn't impact your driving.

ssmoot 10y ago

I feel like you didn't even read the article. Here's the summary of the linked study: > Differences in study designs frequently account for inconsistencies in results between studies. Participant-selection bias and confounding factors attenuate ostensible cannabis effects, but the association with MVA often retains significance. Evidence suggests recent smoking and/or blood THC concentrations 2-5 ng/mL are associated with substantial driving impairment, particularly in occasional smokers. Future cannabis-and-driving research should emphasize challenging tasks, such as divided attention, and include occasional and chronic daily cannabis smokers. Suggesting that taking a couple Tylenol is as dangerous as smoking anything (even tobacco for occasional users) before/while driving is ridiculous.

logfromblammo 10y ago
I believe that comparison with an over-the-counter antihistamine, such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl, Dramamine), Fexofenadine (Allegra), or Cetirizine (Zyrtec) would be more appropriate. Some of the people that I know take drugs to treat their allergies far more often than analgesics for headaches. Here is a thought experiment. You are a passenger in a car, chained to the seat. Would you rather the driver drink shots of ethanol, smoke marijuana cigarettes, swallow antihistamine pills, or log in to Twitter/Facebook via mobile phone? Assume that you wish to minimize both risk of death and the severity of nonfatal injuries.
- function_seven 10y ago
  Very good thought experiment. I would choose marijuana over any of the others in a heartbeat. The only exception would be if the driver is not a regular user. In that case, probably the antihistamines.
  - genericpseudo 10y ago
    Cetirizine and fexofenadine (most 2G antihistamines, in fact) have no significant sedative effect.
    - 10y ago