http://komonews.com/news/nation-world/study-pedestrian-traffic-deaths-surge-with-big-increase-in-legalized-pot-states

In addition to actual deaths caused by this, there are a lot of other issues that are harder to statistically quantify. Is actual pot use up? I have no idea, but it certainly seems significantly up. I smell pot smoke everywhere. While driving, while walking around the malls, while snowboarding, while walking to work, while walking on suburban "nature" trails, etc.

Traffic is significantly worse; lights turn green and there seems to always be someone who just doesn't go; they sit there until they get honked at and then they jerk awake and finally go, but the light changes back to red. Also a ton of people swerving out of their lanes or going 5-15mph under the speed limit. Over and over and over. A lot of this is because of cell phone use (texting/apps/web) while driving or while at stop lights.

I didn't have a problem with legalizing it for medical purposes, but this is just ridiculous. I don't think the state will do anything about it, though:



And if I was reading the article right, they're on pace to more than triple that for FY2018.

I think it's pretty much just this, to be honest. Especially when you mention people erratically jerking their cars to get back in their lanes and not moving at stoplights. I can't speak much to the effects on traffic/driving with the legalization of marijuana as I'm in a state that will likely be one of the last to change their policy (if at all) in Texas.

That being said, whenever I'm driving all I have to do is look in any direction to see someone texting or staring at their phone. Even with some states / counties establishing distracted driving laws to discourage texting and driving, it's not a severe enough penalty to result in any real behavioral change. I feel like that's a far bigger epidemic than the smaller population of idiots who drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Surely law enforcement would investigate pedestrian fatalities and report when impairment is a factor, wouldn’t they? So why is the media left drawing its own conclusions by correlation alone? Where is the law enforcement data?

The media does kind of thing all the time.

I think you're giving the cops too much credit. In my experience (as a witness to a couple of non-fatality accidents, not involved) they just want to give a ticket to anyone and be on their way, regardless of the ticket is correct. Maybe it's different with fatality accidents but I have as much faith in the cops and "law enforcement data" as you do in the media.

It's also possible this is just high pedestrians wandering into traffic. Which is just as bad as impaired drivers.

And yes, I agree, Dark__Knight. People should be losing their licenses over this, on the first offense.

The cops don't take it seriously enough. They fiddle with their phones and in-car laptops while driving. I've been behind cops on the freeway browsing the internet while driving. I took photos (I was a passenger in my dad's truck) of the cop swerving all over the place but I wasn't able to get clear photos of him on his laptop. There will never be a solution if law enforcement is part of the problem.

Pot's bad.

That's a problem then, because correlation does not imply causation. The statistics presented in that article do not mean what they were represented to mean. Based on these results it would be equally correct to claim that pedestrian deaths cause marijuana use. Or, more realistically, maybe pedestrian deaths and marijuana legalization have some common root cause - a booming tech industry, maybe?

Look, I'm not saying there isn't cause for concern. I'm only saying that statistics don't work this way, and they're lying to you to get you to think a certain way they have zero actual evidence to support. Do the actual science first. Then make up your mind.

Or maybe, you know, people get high and go drive and cause accidents.

I don't have the inclination to "do the actual science" -- but even if you completely ignore the increased death rate since the legalization of pot in this state, I've already explained why I think it's a terrible law and why I think they should reverse it. And practically everyone I know says the same thing. Of course, I don't have any "IRL" friends or family members that smoke weed (or if they do, I guess they're discreet enough about it that they're not doing it while they're driving around or walking near traffic).

It shouldn't be hard to test that assumption, then. Why haven't they?

You should; regulating problems before you understand them is precisely how you've ended up with thousands of stupid regulations.

If you're sure that marijuana is a danger and a nuisance, a proper study will conclusively demonstrate such. Having that study means you wouldn't need to argue from uncertainty and moral calculus anymore, because you would have credible evidence to support your ideas. You'd be forcing the anti-prohibition side to argue from uncertainty and morals, instead. I sincerely don't understand your disinclination.

Do you have IRL friends and family members who drink and drive?

If they drink and drive they should be arrested and prosecuted and their licenses taken away and whatever else, same as pot users smoking weed and driving. I don't know of any friends and family members that do that. I know my uncle was killed by a drink driver when I was a kid and my mom has never really gotten over it.

To me this isn't really a moral issue. Well, the legalization isn't a moral issue. (driving under the influence _is_ a moral issue) The default state was this **** was illegal everywhere. Then some states wanted money so they legalized it. Now things are worse for a lot of people and objectively more deadly for pedestrians. (and not just in WA state, but all states where it has been legalized) It seems to me that they should have studied this before they legalized it? 6,000 pedestrians killed doesn't seem like that many (across the entire US population). But of course this information doesn't include other drivers that have been killed, or high drivers that ran off the road and only killed themselves. Or injury-only (not fatality) incidents. Or crashes where there was property damage but no injuries (and do pot smokers carry insurance at the same rate as the rest of the population?).

I don't actually have a fundamental problem with people smoking weed, I just wish they'd do it in the privacy of their own home, where they don't kill people, where they don't impede traffic, and where I don't have to walk through clouds of it on my way to and from work.

I got pulled over for a DUI check in CA a few months back. I was sober as **** but yeah, I was on my phone and the cop was suspicious. In retrospect driving fast + texting is a bad idea.

No ticket though!

Fist bump, my bro.

I've been seeing a lot of CHP DUI checkpoints set up lately. CA must be hurting for cash (still).

Perhaps we should get rid of cars.

(we definitely should)

everyone should bike to work high and live in temperate climates instead of having cars. that's what you're going for, right, Spook?

No.

I'm not convinced it's going to be any safer for sober bike riders to have to dodge pot smokers stumbling out into bike lanes. Also it's cold, rainy, icy here. And public transportation sucks, do we really want to talk about that? Ok, let's talk about that.

Yesterday my wife flew from SEA to San Diego. We live pretty far outside of Seattle and when I do have to go into town (a few times per month) I generally take a ferry, not because it's faster but because I don't have to sit in traffic. The ferry deposits us right in downtown Seattle. From there we walked 4 blocks or so to the bus tunnel entrance where we planned to catch the much touted link light rail that goes from downtown Seattle to the airport. It's supposed to run every 7 minutes or so. Apparently there was some sort of service disruption which of course they don't tell you (at all, much less before you buy your tickets).

We stood down at the platform for about 30 minutes; we watched about a dozen northbound trains go by without a single southbound train. We discussed with another potential passenger just going back up, throwing the tickets in the garbage, and taking an uber. Just as we were about to leave a transit police officer walked by and told everyone there was some issue but a train would be coming soon. We did stick it out and wait but public transportation was ~40 minutes late plus a 40 minute train ride for a drive that would have taken about 20-25 minutes in a car (assuming you didn't get run over by a pot-smoking hippie).

The ride itself was fine, although it was jam-packed and stunk like weed the entire time.

The ride back (after I dropped off my wife) wasn't too bad, although it was odd that while I was waiting on the northbound platform, one train arrived, stopped, didn't open the doors (despite train being empty) and then just left without ever letting anyone on. There was much grumbling on the platform. So we all waited an extra 10 minutes for the next one to arrive. I'm guessing the first train operator was high and forgot to press the "open doors" button.

Next time I'm just taking an Uber or Lyft. Public transportation sucks.

Cut funding to public transport -> it sucks -> everyone pays more for private transport -> economy wins -> people lose

Vote to pay more taxes and fund things properly and things won't suck.

You might be looking at the wrong city; Seattle votes time and again to increase taxes to support public transportation. We have close to the country's highest gas tax, a huge portion of which goes to fund public transportation. Seattle and surrounding areas/counties also pay insanely high car tab fees and property taxes now to support public transportation.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-05-31/the-u-s-has-forgotten-how-to-do-infrastructure

Throwing money at the problem will only make it worse.

For sure, and I didn't know Seattle spent so much, I was actually repeating what another grad student here from WA said about seattle.

Could be, could be. I don't know much about CA's budget right now.



Dancy fingers

Definitely. There is ****ty public transportation is because our society is entirely structured around cars.

I thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a bloody amazing movie, though I never dug into the whole conspiracy, I had always assumed that the country's dispersed geography had no small part in the prominent role of the horseless carriage in the United States (and probably Canada and Mexico).

And then of course there's this fantastic piece of propaganda, produced in order to fund the eponymous theme park from the man behind the same corporation releasing Roger Rabbit.

https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250

this is a fun read

What the **** is wrong with me, why am I using phrases that make me sound I'm a character in a Jane Austen novel.

(Probably been reading too much butler talk...)

I'll check it out.

I'm assuming places where weed has been legalised have drug driving limits?

Sort of, but it's hard to measure because of how long THC is detectable in your system. It's pretty ad hoc right now as far as I know.

I think this is generally true about the US government. The big ideological debates are almost irrelevant, because no matter what we do, it will suck, because it's going to be run terribly and stupidly.