That’s people. That’s not me. In a world where society accepts that being under .05 (ish, depending on place) BAC is a level of impairment at which one’s driving ability is not unduly affected, it’s perfectly reasonable for me to demand similar conditions for people who consume weed and drive - especially considering it has been shown in studies that being stoned to any degree increases your risk of an accident less than drinking to the limit of .05 BAC. Fairness. That’s all we want.
Alcohol makes people perceive themselves to be less affected than they think. Weed tends to have the opposite effect. You can prove it to yourself on youtube. How many videos have you seen of drunk people trying to walk, despite their clear inability to stand up. The fact that they continuously fall is no challenge for their mind’s insistence that they can walk. You won’t find video like this of stoned people.
Pass me a joint and you will. I have a ridiculously low tolerance to weed. There’s not much of a gap for me between giggling and whiting-out.
OTOH, I do get my best lap-times on Gran Turismo when I’m about 1/2 a bottle of Scotch down. Which just goes to show that self-driving cars can’t come quickly enough for me.
Gahd, @Kimmo Y U DRAW MY ATTENTION TO THIS? (I was about to get some work done)
I will second Kimmo’s assertion that things appear scary and dangerous to those who don’t do them regularly. I pop ecstasy and go snowboarding ffs (there are few thrills as exhilarating as peaking while flying down a mountain). We take 4-6 doobs on the mountain each day.
4 years ago it was DUMPING while we were on the mountain (which is a rareish treat if you’re unfortunate enough to love snowboarding and live in Australia). The snowboarder friend I have who is most into smoking weed and I had ridden out the day until last lift. We’d also smoked at least 4 joints. There was 20-30 cm of snow on the roads since that morning which, for Australian drivers is strange and scary.
In the ~20km trip back to the place we were staying we saw at least 3 cars (2 of which were 4WDs) had slid off the road. We were travelling behind a minibus of schoolkids, smoking our last doob when the minibus locked its brakes, sliding of the side of the road and flipping on its side. Thank bob there were no injuries… the point of this story is that the two stoners who had ridden from first to last lift and smoked more joints that day than many people do in a year were able to drive the 20km back safely, while getting even more stoned, when at least 3 cars and a fucking minibus driven by notionally sober people went off the road. Being the out-of-it, inconsiderate stoners we are, we pulled to the side of the road and helped the people out of the bus.
some of you guys and you are SCARY with the risks you take and the way you treat space around other people.
You see noob skiiers breaking the alpine responsibility code all the time - particularly the look uphill and give way if starting off or merging rule. Skiers, more often than snowboarders, also end up in areas of the resort that are outside their skill level (also against the code). It’s also interesting that the code doesn’t say “don’t do drugs and ski” it says “Do not ski, board, ride a lift or undertake any other alpine activity if your ability is impaired by drugs or alcohol.”. The guys who wrote the code were no idiots, and any snowboarder who is true to the sport waits their turn, doesn’t hit features until the landing is clear and calls their turn in the park/pipe - another thing most skiers seem to be entirely ignorant of.
PS: skiing is awesome and I have many friends who do so the right way.
I prefaced my comment with “each to their own”. I should really get off the weed promotion bandwagon, amirite? There’s no video of my anywhere talking about how awesome weed is. What are you trying to say?
You’ve obviously read my previous response to you but instead of responding in a civil way to the questions I asked, you snarkily hammer out a knee-jerk answer instead.
That is different, and supports my point: stoned people typically do not overestimate their abilities. If you’re giggling you can likely walk. If you’re greening out (usually what we call having a severe physiological reaction to being too stoned) you’re also not trying to walk, thinking that you can.
I know that certain skills are enhanced by use of other drugs. My brother is a freaking maniac in CoD when he’s pissed. I’ve seen him drink a bottle of vodka and continue to consistently get K-D spreads like 32-0. My understanding here is that you are better at performing skills that you learned under the influence of a drug when you are taking that drug at future occasions. Basically you play GT when drinking, so you are better at playing GT when drinking.
Trouble is, there’s not much gap between one and the other. And how much it takes to get to that point is difficult to judge and depends on a number of variables and it’s quite alarmingly sudden when it does.
Embarrassingly, I get the same issue from being tattooed. One minute I’m fine, the next it’s “Hey, why am I on the floor?”.
Still, as long as I can walk to the car, I’m safe to drive? Not a chance in hell. Far too risky, IME. But I’ll feel fine, until suddenly I’m not.
I’m not sure what metric could be used to legislate against this, though
Lots of people get this. No one really knows why but it’s likely a combination of immune response and intensity of the situation (kind of like people passing out while public speaking).
In your case it sounds like a good decision not to drive stoned. That’s a choice I fully support. I’m not telling others to drive around stoned, I’m just saying I can and will do it whenever I fucking want, because data shows its less dangerous than drinking to the legal limit and that’s considered responsible behaviour.
They ignore the effects that it has on them, and then put themselves - and sometimes others - at risk. They don’t realize how the high works, and how it will make them more dangerous.
That’s nice, but it certainly does not apply to me. I’d have a PhD in weedology (if it were a thing).
Teapot doesn’t get it - just driving isn’t the problem.
No, I do get it and the data shows that being stoned is no more dangerous than driving after drinking to the legal limit. Society is okay with that, so I demand objective assessment of risk to be applied to all drugs.
(Sorry Teapot, not trying to pile on ya.)
It’s cool man… I’m here to be a thorn in the side of anti-marijuana rhetoric
You can drive, but if anything goes wrong: if you have a blowout, if you miss a light, if another car swerves toward you, if someone walks in front of your car - you’re much more likely to be unable to react in time to correct for the situation.
All of these things have happened to me while stoned and none of them have resulted in an accident. Are my abilities impaired? I’ve already admitted they are. Are they impaired to a level which dangerously affects my driving? Nope, no more than the socially acceptable alternative of drinking to .05 BAC. It’s a car, not a fighter plane.
In fact, Teapot makes the same self assessments that a drunk driver makes, but when high ignores the fact that a drug is in his system and drives anyway.
No man. I know I’m stoned. It’s hard to forget since it’s kind of the reason you do it. My point was that drinking makes people overestimate themselves, while marijuana has the opposite effect.
but it isn’t safer than or even as safe as being sober.
I agree. When the BAC limit is .00 I will not smoke weed and drive. Deal?
My few memories of driving stoned date from the late 70’s
After a shift at McDonalds, closing on a Friday or Saturday night (that is, the wee hours of the following morning), I would occasionally take a longish drive with one of my co-workers who generously supplied the weed, provided I supplied the place.
The place was my van (six years younger than myself), making slow orbits around the nascent bypass loop of my flyover-country capital city.
It was a wild struggle to force myself to maintain a speed above 50mph. I knew I was fucked up, but I also knew that driving as slowly as I was comfortable would instantly get me pulled over.
Thanks for that @funruly. I was out, and just got back home, or I would have happily replied myself. I already corrected this once in this thread, because Nox pulled a partial quote from one place and an unassociated Figure from another place (and then tied them together) when he discussed the Nature article. I replied at the time.
In post 22 (not 23), what I actually did was draw my own conclusions from the Nature study, which tested habitual users of MDMA and cannabis after they had abstained. What I directly said the Nature study showed was this:
It does. Even the shortened version of the pull quote Nox used says that. A full version can be read in my own post 28 - it begins “Figure 3”. Nox omitted the beginning of the paragraph and replaced Figure 3 with Figure 1 (which looks better for people who want to drive stoned). Figure 3 shows that overall, startle reactivity was depressed for cannabis users in all three trials. Also, it should be noted that discussion in the study is focused on MDMA, and increased brain activity - which is what they were actually looking for. So they don’t spend a lot of time talking about cannabis. The best thing to do is just read the data.
I’ve already said (both here and in other threads) that I am happy to agree with research that cannabis is safer than drunk driving, and probably as safe or safer than driving tired (they’re apparently similar in the way they affect driving). I’ve only posted the information I have here because people so frequently state that there is “no data” or that data says “it’s safe”. Well, I took a look a Krymsun’s links that supposedly backed that claim, and they didn’t say that. They only said what I just said - it’s safer than driving drunk.
When I was about 13, I was a pretty decent down-hill skier for a kid growing up in the flatland Midwest. Then one weekend, when the snow at our one area ski “resort” was pretty bad from a recent thaw/re-freeze, I was headed down a black diamond slope when another skier cut a really hard turn right near me, going way faster than I was able, and zoomed across my path. There was no actual contact, but my stability and reaction time wasn’t as good as his, and I partially pulled up out of my crouch in surprise and alarm, causing me to catch an edge and wipe out. I landed hard right on both kneecaps. That’s why I have degenerated cartilage in both knees to this day.
YOU may be able to pull scary-looking-but-really-it’s-OK shit in traffic, stoned, sober, I don’t care. Just because you come out unscathed, though, doesn’t mean other people with different levels of skill and perception and reaction time will. Do I trust someone with altered perceptions to judge how much they can deviate from the norm of everyone else’s traffic behavior without disrupting other people around them? Hell no. I barely trust people sober, especially people who are super confident in their hot dog abilities.
News flash: Pot affects insight as well. The euphoria or paranoia that it can bring on are alterations in perception of self and surroundings. De-personalization, de-realization, panic attacks? All potential side effects of pot use that involve an inaccurate perception of your relationship to your surroundings and/or your physical body. Pot has both stimulant AND depressant effects, as well as psychoactive effects.
Smoke all the pot you want! Smoke 'em if you got 'em! But jeezy creezy, this assertion that you can do it and be “totally fine”? You guys are part of why legalization doesn’t make it past popular votes a good bit of the time.
I kind of hoped it went without saying that I don’t leave a mushroom cloud in my wake and call that safe. Quit straw-manning.
The euphoria or paranoia that it can bring on are alterations in perception of self and surroundings. De-personalization, de-realization, panic attacks?
Obviously you haven’t got the slightest idea of the degree of tolerance attainable. No matter how much weed I smoke, it barely causes more alteration to my state than a single valium.
Euphoria, paranoia, de-personalisation, de-realisation, panic attacks - pff. Maybe for noobs, but for chronic smokers we’re talking a slight buzz. About the difference a cup of coffee makes, in a different direction.
Americans smoke their weed straight, I gather, but here in Oz it’s the norm to mix it 50/50 with tobacco, which makes it extremely addictive, and a distinct craving from just tobacco. To say to folks they must overcome a nicotine addiction in order to be able to drive, simply because ignorant folks imagine the worst, is pretty bogus.
Like I said, if we’re actually serious about road safety rather than picking easy targets to satisfy our need to do something (anything), there are far better places to start.
But seriously, a lot of the loads you lift can be as much as a small car, and a forklift weighs as much as a small truck while being highly maneuverable, so you can really get a feel for the physics of throwing a lot of weight around. Helps car-handling (particularly reversing) immensely.
I have a ridiculously low tolerance to weed. There’s not much of a gap for me between giggling and whiting-out.
I was out, and just got back home, or I would have happily replied myself. I already corrected this once in this thread, because Nox pulled a partial quote from one place and an unassociated Figure from another place (and then tied them together) when he discussed the Nature article. I replied at the time.
