Over 40% of Deceased Drivers in Vehicle Crashes Test Positive for Thc: Study

THC in the blood doesn’t mean actively high for habitual users, which would be most users if THC consumption is high. It means recent use, but not clear impairment.

And the study doesn't seem to differentiate between the different types of THC either, some of which are not psychoactive at all and which people use to relieve pain and anxiety. There's quite a lot of people using non-psychoactive THC which wouldn't impair driving.

It doesn't say anything about the distribution, only that the "average" (presumably, the arithmetic mean, a measure particularly sensitive to distortion by outliers) was at a particularly high level.

When we talk about alcohol, we explicitly separate presence from impairment using blood alcohol concentration. We set legal thresholds because studies show a sharp increase in crash risk above those levels, relative to sober drivers. If alcohol were evaluated by merely asking "was alcohol present?" we would massively overestimate its causal role the same way THC is being overestimated here.

The problem with THC data is not that baseline comparisons are illegitimate; it's that we lack an agreed-upon, time-linked impairment metric comparable to BAC. THC metabolites persist long after intoxication, so presence alone is a weak proxy for risk.

So applying baseline controls to THC is not "apologism", it's applying the same evidentiary standards we already demand for alcohol, so the opposite of what you said.

This is literally how safe legal limits were derived.

Not really, due to THC content in the body not being a reliable indicator of impairment or even time since use.

If BAC were more like THC levels, I suspect the data would show 40% or more of the population has consumed alcohol - or, in your words, is drunk "at any given moment"

The modern world is so cat centric people would rather drive without a license than accept to live without a car. And until you can reliably catch and jail license-less drivers, the bet is worth it for them.

That is because in germany, cars are a religion substitute and just like there can be no speed limit on the Autobahn in general, there can be no real enforcement of speeding.

The fines actually increased a lot in recent years. Still cheap, though. And if there are radar cameras, they are often in places where speeding is quite safe to make money from fines vs places where speeding is actually dangerous (close to schools etc)

It is basically a archaic thing, the bigger the man, the bigger and louder his car and the faster he goes. It shows status.

So I imagine in New York City it works just the same. When the big guys like speeding and the big guys control the state .. then how can there be meaningful regulation of that?

(To confess, I like to drive fast, too. But not in places where kids can jump or fall anytime on the road)

If you don’t pay the tickets, your car is at risk of being booted, but if you don’t park on the street or choose to obscure your license plate when you do (how did that leaf get stuck there!?), there aren’t many repercussions.

There was an attempt at a program to actually seize these cars, originally it would have kicked in at 5 tickets/year for immediate towing, but it was watered down to 15 tickets a year triggering a required safe driving class. They sort of half-assed the execution of that, then pointed at the limited results and cancelled it altogether. There’s an effort to pass a state law about this, we’ll see if it makes progress.

Don't get it twisted, I agree with you. The US is far too tolerant of dangerous driving. We are too dependent on cars for travel, and this is a consequence of it.

The mechanisms for keeping people off the road are also just weaker in the US—I believe the penalties for driving with a suspended license are comparatively lighter, plus if your license is suspended you can often still get a "restricted" license that still lets you drive to work.

Its possible for multiple lanes to turn without anyone cutting anyone off, but its also possible for people to turn right from the middle lane of the source street into the rightmost lane of the target street, cutting off people in the rightmost lane of the source street attempting to turn, or to make a right turn from a middle lane that is not allowed to turn, cutting of a legal right-into-any-lane from the rightmost lane when it is the only turning lane, so if someone explicitly says that's what they see and there is no available counterevidence that they are misreporting their observation, questioning it accompanied by a description of how it is possible for people to turn from multiple lanes into distinct lanes in harmony without anyone being cutoff is not particularly useful.

There’s plenty of desire to increase prosecution rates in American jurisdictions but little desire to raise taxes high enough to pay for lawyers, judges, courthouses, and humane incarceration—let alone assistance for the otherwise innocent families of criminals. The victims of petty crime are usually poor or middle-class and therefore lack the political power to meaningfully change policy.

They got what they wanted--fewer Blacks shot by the police. But that's because the police weren't being as aggressive in doing their job. Crime rates went up, the number of Blacks killed went up--fewer by cops being offset by more from other criminals.

And we see the result of bail reform. The old system was not good--for lesser offenses they were typically sentenced to time served. This amounts to skipping over the determining guilt part of "justice". But when they took action on that they didn't notice that that was what was actually keeping them off the streets. The justice system simply does not have remotely the capacity to actually prosecute as many crimes as they catch.