The most dangerous drivers on the road are those who have been drinking.

Well, them and anybody with a CY licence plate – madness.

With the personal and private use of marijuana decriminalised, questions have been asked about the legalities of driving after smoking.

You can read up on that here, but that’s not what a recent study conducted by researchers from McLean Hospital in Boston was testing.

Rather, the study looked at how heavy marijuana users were more dangerous than non-smoking drivers, even when they weren’t high.

NBC News reports:

The bad driving appears to be isolated to those who started using pot before age 16, researchers reported…The theory is that early marijuana use changes the brain, leaving people more impulsive and more apt to make rash decisions.

In the new study, which tested participants in a driving simulator, researchers…found that sober cannabis users who started using the drug in their teens had more accidents, drove at higher speeds and cruised through more red lights compared to people who had never used marijuana…

For the study, researchers tested 28 heavy-use smokers and 17 non-users, with an average age of 23 across the 45 participants.

In order to ensure honesty, study participants had to provide urine samples, which were tested for drugs, including cannabis

More on the results:

During the driving test, cannabis users were more likely than non-users to speed, hit a pedestrian, cross the center line, miss stop signs and cruise through red lights. The cannabis users were also more likely to score high in impulse behavior…

[Researchers] found that the bad driving was almost exclusively limited to people who had started in their teens and that the young starters were also more impulsive.

One important caveat is that the study cannot show whether or not those who started smoking early on were already impulsive, which may be the case.

Researchers added that they “don’t fully understand the health impacts of heavy frequent cannabis use”.

For some local context, TimesLIVE spoke with Layton Beard of the Automobile Association of SA:

“We haven’t done any such studies … but anything that is going to impair your ability to function 100% on the task of driving is something that really concerns us.

“If you have taken a drug and you go into a roadblock, how are the authorities going to determine that you’re not capable of driving?

“We have no issue against anything that is legal, and if people want to use it, it is their right to do so, but a huge concern is how it impacts on people’s driving abilities,” said Beard.

Ultimately, we all just want our roads to be safer for everyone who uses them.

Smoke responsibly, drive responsibly, and if you’re drinking, don’t get behind the wheel. Simple.

[sources:nbc&timeslive]