"Just because 1 person can drive drunk, doesn't mean you should allow thousands of others to as well."
I think this is the appropriate stance to take with alcohol because there is lots of data establishing that driving while above .08 does have a greatly increased relative risk. With marijuana though there is lots of research, but it all shows that that drivers under the influence of marijuana are much less dangerous than drivers who are at the legal limit for alcohol.
What no one like talking about though is that if you want to really understand what's best from a public policy perspective, you need to understand that the absolute risk of driving while intoxicated is actually relatively small. If you drive 10 miles at a .08 your risk of dying would be ~1 in 4,000,000, as opposed to ~1 in 20,000,000 while completely sober. I'm certainly not advocating driving while intoxicated. But that being said, if you want to decrease your overall odds of dying then driving half as much in general would be much more effective than not driving while intoxicated once or twice a year. And similarly, good public transportation would be much more effective at reducing fatalities than harsher DUI penalties.
So far we've spent $1.5 trillion enforcing the war on drugs in the last 40 years, which combined with the lost tax revenue would be enough to build the entire nationwide high speed rail corridor roughly 3 times over. If we really want to reduce fatalities over the next 40 years, then we'd be much better taxing and regulating drugs and using the money to redesign our cities and nation around an internationally competitive public transportation system.
Question on marijauna and driving: how would the level be tested? I read a comment elsewhere in the thread that there's no easy way to do it like with a breathalyzer -- would someone have to be brought into the station and given a blood test? If so, the threshold seems to be a bit on the academic side, because that's a lot of effort on the part of the police and it seems like that alone would restrict it to the people driving truly terribly.
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And at the risk of being too blunt: I'm not too concerned about drunk (or high) drivers increasing their own chances of dying. (Though, yes, if everyone drove less everyone would be less likely to die.)
Though on a policy side, I imagine it would be a lot easier to lower the limit than raise it, so I'd favor erring on the "too high" side (who wants to run up against a "HE/SHE WANTS HIGHER DRIVERS ON YOUR STREETS" campaign?).
So there are basically four ways to test for the presence of marijuana: saliva, blood, urine, and hair. Because smoked marijuana is only intoxicating for 4 - 6 hours, ideally we want to use a test that will only pop positive if someone has used the drug within the last 4 - 6 hours. Saliva testing roughly fits this profile. With blood you would still pop positive up to a day later, with urine up to a week or more later, and with hair testing up to several months later.
The good news though is that saliva testing is easy and cheap, and can be done in the field by police officers, unlike with blood testing. I think ultimately per se limits that are enforced with saliva testing (but not with the other methods) are reasonable, but the limits need to actually be based on science, not just pulled out of someone's ass.
(Of course this is assuming that better studies eventually do support per se limits for marijuana, which they don't seem to currently.)
In that case would just be wiser to suspend 80% of everyones driver licenses, because on average people drive that bad sober.
Yesterday I almost got hit by a stupid driver while walking my dog. She didn't stop where she was supposed to, in an attempt not to hit a bus she ran over the sidewalk.
The scary thing, the moment she saw me was after this episode when I politely said you almost killed me.
Completely agree. I drive for a living, and while I'm not the best I'm well above average in my driving competency.
What I see on a near daily basis is terrifying. I almost t-boned someone because they decided to pull across oncoming traffic to get into a parking lot of a hotel, whilst towing a 30ft boat trailer, on one of the rainiest days of the year, with oncoming traffic coming down a very steep highway overpass. I slammed on my breaks as soon as I saw the idiot start turning. I laid on my horn and basically had to sit there as my ABS chugged away hoping I don't hit him, and hoping my work trailer's brakes don't lock the wheels, lose traction and jackknife into an adjacent lane. I missed the guy by literally less than a foot.
What trumped it, the guy had no license plate on his trailer! I couldn't report the moron even though I wanted to.
This time of year is seriously the worst, when all the cyclists stop biking to work and get back in the car. You get people running red lights and stops, no clue how a 4-way stop works, etc. etc. Speaking from experience once those bikes disappear crazyness on the road increases 10-fold. I know correlation /= causation, but it sure as hell is the biggest coincidence I've ever seen.
I think this is the appropriate stance to take with alcohol because there is lots of data establishing that driving while above .08 does have a greatly increased relative risk. With marijuana though there is lots of research, but it all shows that that drivers under the influence of marijuana are much less dangerous than drivers who are at the legal limit for alcohol.
What no one like talking about though is that if you want to really understand what's best from a public policy perspective, you need to understand that the absolute risk of driving while intoxicated is actually relatively small. If you drive 10 miles at a .08 your risk of dying would be ~1 in 4,000,000, as opposed to ~1 in 20,000,000 while completely sober. I'm certainly not advocating driving while intoxicated. But that being said, if you want to decrease your overall odds of dying then driving half as much in general would be much more effective than not driving while intoxicated once or twice a year. And similarly, good public transportation would be much more effective at reducing fatalities than harsher DUI penalties.
So far we've spent $1.5 trillion enforcing the war on drugs in the last 40 years, which combined with the lost tax revenue would be enough to build the entire nationwide high speed rail corridor roughly 3 times over. If we really want to reduce fatalities over the next 40 years, then we'd be much better taxing and regulating drugs and using the money to redesign our cities and nation around an internationally competitive public transportation system.