Driving Under the Influence

I saw an article in today’s newspaper about DUI. Over 50% of accidents in love someone that have THC, alcohol, opioids, or stimulants in their blood system. I was surprised to read that THC edged out alcohol as the highest contributor. Even pedestrians get into the act. Over 50% of them are impaired when involved in auto accidents, and 43% of bicyclists are also impaired when struck by vehicles.

So, what percent of cars on road have impaired drivers at any given time? Sober drivers don’t get in accidents?
1 million cars on road at any given time. 33,000 get in accidents. 967,000 are not impaired?

If over 50% are impaired…then obviously some fraction less then 50% isn’t impaired.

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a bucha years back, one of the local colleges had a big event with lots of vendors taking part. One of the vendors was MADD (or perhaps a similar organization,) that was there teaching against drunk driving. They had a small driving course set up with golf carts, and would let teenage drivers drive it: once normal, and then again after they put on “Beer goggles” that would make their vision obscured similar to if they were drunk.

my nephew (who didn’t have a license yet at this point,) drove better with the beer goggles on…

So what happened to basic math and logic? The question was, how many drivers on the road now are impared? If you don’t see the obvious connection to impared drivers being more likely to be in an accident, and the statistic is only showing drivers in accidents, and how that means that the number of impared drivers who were in accidents really has nothing to do with being able to determine the number of impared on the road right now, then you should not be involved in analyzing statistics!

The only way I know of is to randomly stop cars for drug tests. Then compare the number of positives to the number of positives after random tests at accidents.

No one made any such claim. All that was reported is the percentage drivers in accident.

And the word is Impaired.

THC may have edged out alcohol because it is detectable in your system for up to 30 days after use, but you are not necessarily impaired the whole 30 days.

We have long known that 50%+ drivers involved in accidents are impaired by alcohol or drugs so this is hardly a breaking news story. Must have had to fill some empty space on a page.