TIL police have a big enough god complex they think they are doctors with no training.
wait, are you implying that cops are filthy fucking liars???
Sir you are too blacough high to drive.
One of the biggest culture shocks as a Danish person visiting California, was seeing how normalised driving high was. I smoke pretty regularly, but I would never even think about getting behind the wheel after a single puff.
I agree with you people shouldn’t, but this is about our police being able to do whatever they want and ruining lives purely based on their intuition, which is frequently wrong and unriable at best.
Just keep a MAGA hat under your seat and throw it on when you get pulled over.
I totally believe police sincerely think they can tell based on experience, but it’s false confidence.
Story time: One night on my way home I was pulled over for a broken taillight, which I truthfully told the officer I wasn’t aware of. After taking another look she gave me a warning but said, with a little lilt in her voice, “Lotta dust in there, looks like it’s been broken for a while… surprised you haven’t noticed it.” As if she “knew” I was lying, because cops have heard it all before.
I really wanted to unload on her that I was on my way home from working at my job and then taking my shift sitting in the hospital room keeping my 10-year-old daughter company until she fell asleep. She had been undergoing cancer treatments for the last 2 months. So excuse the hell outta me but there were a lot of things I’d missed lately. Like Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And apparently a broken taillight. I’ll get to it when I get to it but I can’t make any promises.
That smirky little accusing tone of voice still sticks with me after 20 years. So fuck your smug-ass attitude, Officer I Know What I Know, because no you sure as fucking hell didn’t.
Bad people shouldn’t be in positions of power. Why aren’t we protected from this? We’re being abused and no one is stopping it. I want to send a message somehow.
Officer threatened to slam my dad on the ground in front of us all for telling him politely to have a nice day.
Officer screamed at us in high school when we called for help because someone was beating up our friend then did nothing.
Officer pulled me out of my car, threw me over the his, wrenched my hands up behind my back… Because my registration was out of date.
I’ve only been too high to drive once. And you know what? I didn’t drive. I was too high.
Sir, your skin is too dark to drive
Drunk driving is a legitimate concern. High driving, despite the vilifying by police, simply doesn’t have even a modest fraction of the stats to back it up. And anecdotally is not remotely the same as alcohol.
Elderly driving is the conversation we don’t apparently want to have. Just because Gamgam can still get around on her own, in the house she’s lived in for 40 years, does NOT make her capable of driving a two ton piece of metal.
Their reaction speed is like a drunk person. Their decision making skills, also akin to drunk people. Elderly drivers injure and/or kill pedestrians and drivers every year, and we’re supposed to be OK with it because they’re old? Fuck no. They should be tested every year if they still want to drive, and losing their license means losing their vehicle too.
Ummm, if it can fuck with your perceptions when you’re high enough you shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a chunk of metal going a speed. Not enough data is no justification, even if it’s “not as bad”. I have, and I’m sure others also, personal experiences of being high as fuck and barely being able to experience the passage of time in a coherent way, feeling like your forgetting what happened 30 seconds earlier.
Field sobriety shenanigans aside, I really hope we’re not pretending like driving high is okay. Cars can kill, and you had better not be under the influence of anything that is a detriment to you driving safely.
Please, please, tell me you meant to write: “Drunk driving is a legitimate concern. High driving, despite the vilifying by police, simply doesn’t have even a modest fraction of the stats to back it up. And anecdotally is not remotely the same as alcohol. But you still shouldn’t drive under the influence of that either. Police should be required to administer scientifically accurate tests and acceptable blood contents be determined. Not field sobriety tests based on nothing.”
Because else, yikes.
Here’s my anicdotal account:
I have driven high more hours than I have driven sober. I have only ever gotten a ticket or gotten in an accident when completely sober. Despite the assumptions, so far the data points towards me being a safer driver while high on a normal amount of weed.
Are there sufficient studies out there showing fewer accidents while under the influence of weed? Or negligible effect?
Else, I’m gonna have to press X to doubt, and really would rather wait on further studies before letting you think your self-reported performance is convincing.
Weed affects your cognition, I hope we can agree on this. How adversely for driving, according to dose, that I don’t know. Though I don’t think anyone should accept people telling you “nah, it’s fine, trust me bro. I only got into an accident when I was sober!”
Cars are deadly, and you ought to be sober while operating heavy machinery.
Stop doing it until studies are done (and, they will, given how widespread it’s use is legally now), but heck, pressing all sorts of X to doubt on this turning out to be true. It affects your attention. And cars are deadly, so.
You are morally obligated to err on the side of caution here.
Stop driving high, please.
Yikes. Hecking big yikes.
So, by the logic in your argument, police should stop and perform snap cognitive tests anytime they see someone who looks over the age of 70? Or even 60- as the medical community seems broadly in consensus that cognitive decline kicks off around that point.
So perhaps the bigger question is:
Why are you OK with having elderly drivers on the road, when we know it’s only a matter of time before they aren’t capable of the necessary tasks required to safely operate a vehicle, at speed, and in dynamic environments, and yet your focus is on the hypothetical potential of marijuana impaired driving?
Per my original comment: elderly driving is the conversation we are refusing to have- and to add on, it’s because elderly drivers are not capable of self-regulating their behavior, and yet if elderly motor vehicle laws come to pass, the entire Baby Boomer generation would fall under the auspices of an elderly driver mandate for annual cognitive testing/licensure.
Apologies, I only took issue with downplaying being high and driving. Don’t get high and drive is all I’m saying here, and think your original comment seemed like you were saying it’s fine.
I’m totally with you on the elderly, you ought to need to renew you licence with a test when you get older. Because yeah, cars are deadly a f.
All good. My opinion of the average driver’s competency is not charitable either. The median sober driver is still of barely-passes-muster capability and training. As an example of absurdity: to qualify for a Washington DC license, drivers are not required to perform parallel parking in the test…in a small city where a large portion of parking is exclusively parallel.
The roads will only be “safer” when our whole society has reliable, easily accessible, and low cost public transportation options. Which should essentially render roadway-centric transportation moot for the average person.
Amen to that
What do you think of this?
https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e536
Results We selected nine studies in the review and meta-analysis. Driving under the influence of cannabis was associated with a significantly increased risk of motor vehicle collisions compared with unimpaired driving (odds ratio 1.92 (95% confidence interval 1.35 to 2.73); P=0.0003); we noted heterogeneity among the individual study effects (I2=81). Collision risk estimates were higher in case-control studies (2.79 (1.23 to 6.33); P=0.01) and studies of fatal collisions (2.10 (1.31 to 3.36); P=0.002) than in culpability studies (1.65 (1.11 to 2.46); P=0.07) and studies of non-fatal collisions (1.74 (0.88 to 3.46); P=0.11).
Conclusions Acute cannabis consumption is associated with an increased risk of a motor vehicle crash, especially for fatal collisions. This information could be used as the basis for campaigns against drug impaired driving, developing regional or national policies to control acute drug use while driving, and raising public awareness.
Sci-hub link: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e536
This is yet another reason we desperately need good public transit. We all get old. Why do we have to choose between endangering other people’s lives and participating in society?
Because the auto industry paid lobbyists for decades to prevent the spread of local and national rail and tram lines?
Sorry, that’s kind of an oblique answer, the direct answer is money. A few extraordinarily wealthy people made a few more people rich by sacrificing what is right and good for America, with what is convenient and enriching for them. And now all our urban areas are designed for cars instead of people, which makes them shitty and inhospitable.
As a society, we would understand better, if more of us had the ability and desire to see how other industrialized nations live, but instead we just ramrod “American exceptionalism” until lil Johnny thinks his patch of Iowa, or Alabama, or Texas or wherever is equal to, or superior to anywhere else. All without ever having to leave the state, at all. I mean, what if they don’t have FOOD there?
Strictly speaking, most of the American Midwest doesn’t have any food at all. They grow hard unappetizing corn to feed animals and for ethanol.
Which is even more insulting because taxpayers subsidize farmers to grow that corn instead of food, and we now know that ethanol is not better for the environment, and actually contributes to greater environmental damage. But $$$.
Everyone should be tested periodically for reaction time and situational awareness. Every two years if you want to keep your license.
“Boo hoo! That means people won’t be able to drive if they don’t pass!”
GOOD.
It blows my mind how easy it is for drunk drivers to get back behind the wheel. Once someone has proven how overwhelmingly selfish and foolish they are, it’s unfair to everyone else to put us in that danger.
So our solution is simply to weaken civil liberties for everyone with unreasonable searches.
First anecdote:
I’m convinced driving stoned is still a problem (though I understand my experiences may be an outlier);
My friend used to drive stoned regularly, and while in the car with him he failed to notice traffic lights and stop signs. These are mistakes he didn’t make while sober.
Caveat: he was an inexperienced driver at the time, so he probably hadn’t developed intuitive driving habits, so being stoned meant he needed to manually assess every action.
Second anecdote:
I feel that driving drunk is so bad, not necessarily because of distraction or motor control (though once sufficiently drunk, these are absolutely an issue)
I feel the most dangerous part about driving drunk is the overconfidence which comes with it. People are much more likely to take risks while drunk. Conversely, people who are stoned are paranoid, so they’re locked in and focused on not looking like they’re driving inebriated.
I hope when I’m too old to drive I have the good sense to quit.
I’ve nearly been mowed down by elderly drivers on numerous occasions. It’s a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
ah yes, the police. the people with a reputation for always properly assessing every situation
As virtually anyone who has ever been to college knows: they can’t.
Cobb County Police in Georgia got some bad press for this a few years back. An officer took a weekend course to certify he could tell when people were drunk or high, and then he ruined a bunch of innocent people’s lives.
I mean, so can I in a sense – guys passed out on my couch. “Yup, he’s too high to drive.”
In seriousness, I wish they’d just bust people driving recklessly. It’s almost every day now that I’m almost side swiped by an aggressive muscle car driver; it’s driving me crazy. I don’t care what they’re on, alcohol, cocaine, meth, or just pure uncut Machismo, I need those people fucking jailed before it’s my kid on the news about getting hit and run’d.
We as a society must have a solution which is not the police solving every fucking inconvenience. They are literally killing us in our own homes. Please do the difficult mental work of figuring out a better solution than “call the cops”. I know it’s convenient but our overreliance on it has resulted in one the greatest incarceration crisis of our lifetime. I know you’re angry but please start thinking of other ways to solve problems.
Get rid of stops for small shit like expired tabs or dim taillights so traffic cops can focus on unsafe driving. John Oliver did a pretty good piece on this recently.
Odd for you to call vehicular manslaughter an inconvenience, but let’s be clear: you can both reduce police involvement where it is not needed (such as mental health crisis) while still maintaining some order for actual dangerous offenders. You can also approach a problem from multiple angles, such as making prisons more about rehabilitation than punishment, or addressing future crime by investing in education and family welfare.
None of that means you also can’t address a very local problem of 40,000 annual hit and runs with 8,000 deaths. Living in South LA, you literally see street take overs at least once a week usually with stolen cars. Doing two things at once- that is, addressing the current problems while also preventing future ones- shouldn’t be difficult for someone “doing the mental work” like yourself.
How many of those 40,000 hit and runs with 8000 deaths were prevented by police officers?
Your strategy doesn’t work.
If police and prisons made us safer, we’d be the safest country on the planet. We’re not. Police hurt people after a crime has been committed, not before. Your strategy does. not. work.
That’s the point of police reform. They weren’t prevented because reckless driving isn’t enforced here. The police here suck, and have always sucked, and should be replaced and reformed.
Now, if you’re done misconstruing my argument to fit your virtue signaling, why don’t you say the solution to hit and run drivers, and while you’re at it, street take overs?
I’m not working signaling because I never hear anyone say this: The police should be fully abolished, the prisons should be emptied, and the judicial system should be forced to find a way to solve societal problems without them. This is because they are a for-profit, corrupt, wildly inhumane and ineffective system that has resulted in generations of Americans losing their lives behind bars for harmless crimes.
You keep bringing up reckless driving, but the majority people in jail aren’t there for vehicle offenses. They’re mostly kids who got caught with marijuana. Do you really want a wildly racist institution, which takes away people’s freedom for profit to continue to operate just because you’re inconvenienced by other people driving?
Stop being selfish. The problem affects more than just you.
They keep bringing up reckless driving because that was the thesis of their original comment. They’re concerned about reckless driving because it results in violence, bodily harm, and death in their community.
You came stomping in here about police reform and the disproportionate rate of incarceration for non-violent offenders. And while those criticisms are valid, they’re misplaced here.
Further arguing the point is demeaning to everyone involved
I would argue they are perfectly placed, not misplaced.
My counter argument is that injury and death caused by reckless driving is not solved by the police. And worse, the prison crisis is doing great harm to our society, mostly to people of color.
I was countering what that person said, and you think it’s misplaced? I think what you mean is it’s not convenient to you. Seems to be a trend.
You aren’t wrong but the overincarceration is largely sentence lengths not arrest rates
Actual reckless driving needs to be enforced though. It needs to be something you go to jail for, your car gets towed, and you can’t drive again until the fine is paid, and you take Driver’s Ed. There are people out here doing 20+ mph faster than everyone else and weaving through the merge lane and shoulder because the HOV lane and farthest travel lane are flowing at 80 and that’s just too slow for them. This is not, “every fucking inconvenience”. These people are driving like they’re the object of a police chase already and police aren’t allowed to do it anymore because it’s so dangerous to other people on the road.
So while I get you don’t like the police, I’m not sure how else you’re going to stop McFuckStick from swiping that family of four into the back of a semi truck.
We give someone with a high school diploma a few weeks of training a badge and a gun. They don’t even have to fully understand the law.
And now they can tell if you’re high or not from first sight.
You don’t think cops cant tell what’s white or wrong?
i have witnessed 100% sober drivers, blowing zero on a breathalyzer being arrested because the cops felt like it. anyone else failing so hard at their jobs would be fired, and these people are supposed to be trusted with extra responsibilities and human killing devices.
acab
Portable breathalyzers are notoriously unreliable and it’s definitely possible for them to indicate zero on someone that is drunk. And also the other way around, which is why the tests always have to repeated with a stationary breathalyzer or a blood sample to be used as evidence in court.
That being said, it’s still not acceptable for cops to arrest people without probable cause
Were those people black by chance?
nope, not in my case. they were butt-hurt because a bunch of designated drivers were picking up drunk people
Well their quota was bust if no one was drunk driving. They would have to work harder.
Man I hope you show this comment when you’re in need of help.
Dude for real - if this dude ends up being the victim of a home invasion who the hell is he going to call to show up 8 hours later to interrogate him like he was the culprit and probably shoot his dog for some reason?
‘just wait til you need a bully with a human killing device’ shouldnt be something anyone has to say
I’ve got my own actually. Cops won’t be there for me, but I will be.
Alright kiddo
im sure youve witnessed good cops ignore bad cops, right? so the general public cant tell which is which, youve had that front seat?
ill bet youre all for licensing, insuring them and holding them accountable when they completely fail their jobs, right? ending qualified immunity is a good start, right?
its amazing the bullshit you witness when you work for and with them.
Yeah, I was never a blue line guy, they are the government, so I can’t just assume they are my buddy, or working for my personal benefit. However, after years of working in a career where I had to interact with police, from all over the place, I now hate police. They see the general public as the enemy, and you should see them the way they see you.
Stoned folks will drive straighter than an arrow at slower speeds. They are safer than an asswipe glued to their Galaxy or iPhone.
