The largest-ever study into drugs and driving was published in Australia last October. The study was performed by the University of Adelaide and Transport SA, and found that drivers with cannabis in their blood were slightly less likely to cause accidents than those without.

The study analyzed 2,500 accidents, matching blood alcohol and drug levels of injured drivers with details from police reports. Researchers found that drug-free drivers caused the accidents in 53.5% of cases, while drivers with cannabis in their blood had a lower culpability rate of 50.6%. Injured drivers with a blood-alcohol concentration of more than 0.05% were culpable in almost 90% of accidents.

This study confirms the results of a comprehensive 1992 study by the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), which concluded that marijuana is rarely involved in driving accidents except when combined with alcohol, and that "there was no indication that marijuana by itself was a cause of fatal accidents."

A 1983 study by the NHTSA which used stoned drivers on simulators concluded that the only statistically significant effect associated with marijuana use was slower driving! Another NHTSA study performed in 1993 dosed drivers with THC and tested them on real roads. It concluded that "THC’s adverse effects on driving performance appear relatively small."

Sorry, Flex, you misread the experiment. (I did too - I had to read it several times before I 'got' it. My first reaction was, "Hey, that adds up to more than 100%!" But it makes sense once you figure out their sample.)

It turned out, upon just a little further inquiry, that the experimenters had injected drug X into the rats to disable the brain receptors which 'fit' the cannabinols, preventing the brain from 'absorbing' the molecules. Only then were the rats injected with THC. As a result, the rats showed signs of addiction. In short, what the data actually 'proved' is something that was already known: That humans (and some other mammals) have receptors which fit and process the cannabinols. They proved that cannabis is not addictive unless the natural brain receptors are inoperative. (BTW there is no known disease or drug, other than X, which causes a failure of receptors like this.) The "proof of addiction" turned out to be a 'spin' put on it by the sponsors of the experiment.

Anyway, the point is: saying, "everything written by Cannabis Culture is a lie," is simply poisoning the well. It's not a counter-argument.

PIMP, the experiment does not take all accidents and calc the percent of each drug's use. The way I understand it, there were 3 different samples. #1: accidents where one (and only one) driver was sober. #2: accidents where one driver was drunk #3: accidents where one driver was stoned. This corrects for the proportionally more drivers drive drunk fact. In the accidents with one party drunk, that party was culpable 90% of the time. In the accidents with one party stoned, that party was culpable only 50.6 percent of the time. This is not surprising, since alcohol is much more intoxicating than cannabis. (Why do you think those intoxication tests like walking in a straight line don't work on stoners?)

Let run through it again. The experimenter looked at the medical records of people who were injured in an accident. They threw out all the people showing multiple drugs. Then they looked at whose fault the accident was, according to the police record. Out of injured drivers showing only alcohol in their systems, 90% were at fault for the accident. Out of those showing only cannabis, barely more than 50% were at fault for the accident.

Reality check. Cannabis does not kill brain cells. Alcohol does, but cannabis does not. Cannabinols fit into brain receptors and are harmlessly absorbed. Get your facts straight, PIMP!

Whether there would be fewer accidents depends on whether, when pot is legalized, people would tend to switch to their favorite drug, in this case switch from alcohol to pot, or whether people will tend to do both. If enough people switch from alcohol to pot, then we would expect the number of accidents to go down.