Marijuana Doesn’t Make You More Likely To Crash Your Car

Cheech-and-Chong-drivingMarijuana Doesn’t Make You More Likely To Crash Your Car

A study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concludes that driving after smoking weed does not make a driver more likely to get into a car crash— especially when compared to driving after alcohol consumption.

Researchers studied 9,000 drivers over the past year to examine marijuana’s impact on driving, reports Think Progress. Although 25 percent of marijuana users were more likely to be involved in a car crash than people who did not use the drug, gender, age, and race/ethnicity of marijuana users were considered, demographic differences actually contributed substantially to crash risk. Younger drivers had a higher crash rate than older ones, and men crashed more than women.

On the other hand, drivers who consumed alcohol were significantly more likely to crash. Those with a 0.08 percent breath alcohol level crashed four times more than sober drivers, and people with a 0.15 percent level were 12 times more likely to crash.

Highway fatalities have gone down since Colorado legalized marijuana a couple years back. And it seems as if all that hype from the media and anti-pot legalization advocates about the dangers of “drugged driving” wreaking havoc on our highways as a result of states legalizing marijuana has turned out to be nothing but bullshit.



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