The Weed with Roots in Hell Redux

A while back, I questioned Germany's continued ban on marijuana. In the comments, I agreed with pot skeptics that driving while stoned should remain illegal. The latest studies now apparently show that even here, our artificial, delicious, legal and ubiquitous friend alcohol is much more dangerous than our natural, delicious, illegal enemy marijuana:

A new study suggests that legalizing medical marijuana reduces traffic fatalities. The authors noted that legalizing marijuana reduces alcohol consumption, and people are more wary of driving high than drunk. Which drug is actually more dangerous on the road?

Alcohol, and it’s not even close. It’s hard to directly compare alcohol and marijuana, because driving impairment depends on dosage and the two drugs tend to affect different skills. (Pot makes drivers worse at mindless tasks like staying in a lane, while alcohol undermines behaviors that require more attention like yielding to pedestrians or taking note of stop signs.) Nevertheless, Yale psychiatrist Richard Sewell reviewed the academic literature on driving while intoxicated in a 2009 article, and found that alcohol is significantly more dangerous. Real-world data from auto accidents indicate that a drunk driver is approximately 10 times more likely to cause a fatal accident than a stoned driver. In most studies, smoking one-third of a joint or less has virtually no impact on a driver’s performance. A couple of studies even suggest that pot smokers are less likely to cause an accident than sober drivers.

The mechanism is interesting: people who are high are well aware that they're high and therefore try to compensate for their impaired state, while people who are drunk consistently underestimate their level of impairment and therefore don't take adequate measures to compensate for it.

Comments

[daniela]

I once read that Bavarian police are specifically on the lookout for drivers exhibiting a driving particularly slow and careful driving style, thus betraying the fact that they are high on Marijuana. Go figure.