Warning Signs: Fatalities From Driving High Are On The Rise
There is a misconception that driving impaired by cannabis is safer or less risky than drunk driving. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Don’t believe us? In one study, 40% of drivers who died in a traffic accident tested positive for active THC during their autopsy. The following resources have been curated to provide you with the information to make an educated and informed decision.
Have the talk with your friends and family. We don’t let them drive drunk, don’t let them drive high.
Fox 32: Driving High Is Killing More People Than You Think
Study: American College of Surgeons
In a review of 246 deceased drivers, 41.9% tested positive for active THC in their blood, with an average level of 30.7 ng/mL — far exceeding most state impairment limits.
The high rate of THC positivity remained consistent over six years and was unaffected by the state’s legalization of recreational cannabis during the study period.
Studying death certificates from 2009 to 2019, the University of Illinois Chicago found a 10% increase in motor vehicle death in four states where marijuana was legalized recreationally: Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and California.
Studying the same 10-year period, another study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that throughout the entire U.S., the legalization of recreational marijuana was associated with a 6.5% increase in injury crashes and a 2.3% increase in fatal crashes.
The most comprehensive study ever done on driving while high leaves little room for doubt: Marijuana consumption makes people worse drivers.
For a 2021 paper published in the Frontiers in Psychiatry journal, researchers came up with a representative dose of cannabis, then asked participants to complete a series of complex simulated driving tests: driving straight through unpredictable wind gusts, following at a safe distance behind another car that slows down and speeds up irregularly, and passing a car stopped on a highway while avoiding oncoming traffic in the other lane.
“We saw all sorts of different errors,” lead researcher Godfrey Pearlson, Yale University professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, and author of The Science of Weed, tells Fortune. “But in general, people’s reaction time is a lot slower—and significantly slower. And when it comes to the more complex decisions, they come much closer to being involved in an accident.”
Car crashes involving weed were serious. In marijuana-involved accidents, nearly 90% of the victims arrived by ambulance, the study found. When no alcohol or cannabis was involved, the number of people that required an ambulance dropped to 40%. In addition, nearly 50% of marijuana users in a car accident required hospital admission, compared to just over 6% of those who did not use.
Intensive care admissions were also higher. Nearly 22% of accidents involving those driving while stoned needed intensive care, compared to just less than 2% of crashes without alcohol or cannabis involvement, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
The report finds alcohol and cannabis are the two most commonly detected drugs among drivers arrested for impaired driving and fatally injured drivers. Most drivers who tested positive for cannabis also tested positive for another potentially impairing drug.
Although cannabis and many other drugs have been shown to impair driving performance and are associated with increased crash risk, there is evidence that, relative to alcohol, awareness about the potential dangers of driving after using other drugs is lower.
Before the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, 50.8% of seriously or fatally injured drivers tested positive for at least one potentially impairing drug
category, and 17.6% tested positive for two or more.17 For the 4 months studied after the declaration, the proportions increased significantly to 64.7% and 25.3%,
respectively. Alcohol and cannabis were the most common drugs detected.
“Cannabis-induced driving impairments can persist longer than previously assumed, with certain effects lasting up to 5 hours after consumption of higher THC doses (13%),” Meda explained. “This timeframe exceeds the typical 3-hour window explored in earlier studies.”
The researchers also found a disconnect between how participants felt and how they performed. While most subjects reported feeling impaired for only two to three hours, the driving impairments lasted longer. In fact, many participants said they were willing to drive just two hours after using cannabis, even though objective measures showed their performance was still affected. This mismatch between subjective judgment and actual ability suggests that people may be unaware of the risks they pose when driving under the influence.
“Approximately two-thirds of participants were willing to drive despite being aware of their impairment, highlighting a significant public safety concern,” Meda noted. “Self-perceived readiness to drive does not align with objective measures of driving performance.”