Yes, in an ideal world we would do that. But by the time we come up with a perfect test that can be done roadside by police to determine driving impairment, that has very few false positives and holds up in court, we'll most likely have self driving cars and this won't be an issue anyway.
I understand that everyone reacts differently to different drugs. Dale Earnhardt can probably be a little tipsy and still drive better than me. But even if you are an above average driver, it's still immoral (and I think should be illegal) to use substances that will increase your risk of killing someone else in a car accident, even if you are having a small amount of those substances that just brings you down to average driver levels.
Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death. It's an inherently risky activity to be doing every day. But we've structured our society in a way that makes it unavoidable. Given that it's dangerous even for sober people, I don't think we should be giving people the right to drive under circumstances that make it even more dangerous.
Lots of behaviors impair your driving ability. A study found that being dehydrated caused the same number of driving errors as being drunk [0]. I'm sure it would be easy to make a field sobriety test for blood water content, but they don't, because safety isn't the real reason these laws get made. It's just public pressure to enforce moral values.
That study [0] had so many flaws it's not even funny.
1. It only had 12 participants
2. One of those participants was excluded from the final results
3. They didn't test the participants' (or a separate group's) driving ability while under the influence of alcohol (they used a simulator, so it would have been fine), and so you really can't use the results to make any comparisons between dehydration and alcohol use
4. The study was funded by the European Hydration Institute
Oh trust me, "Big Water" is very much a thing. I've met a guy who runs a coke bottling plant; he could hardly believe his luck. They literally just run the existing stuff dry, and it's got massive margins.
> "To put our results into perspective, the levels of driver errors we found are of a similar magnitude to those found in people with a blood alcohol content of 0.08%"
This is just comparing against the lower limit of what we legally allow. Clearly, many drunk drivers are far drunker than this.
But in any case, I don't think it's "just public pressure to enforce moral values". You can't legally drive on Ambien, but this is a prescribed drug that I don't think people have a moral issue with.
While I think the dehydration example above is probably a stretch since it's not really as bad as alcohol, there are other things that are. I'm pretty sure driving with lack of sleep is pretty bad. But it's just not practical to test for it as far as I know.
> safety isn't the real reason these laws get made. It's just public pressure to enforce moral values
Oh please. Alcohol accounts for 30ish percent of driving fatalities. Even if dehydration is equally dangerous (a big if) it’s still far less prevalent. Maybe that’s the reason there’s no law about it.
There are other things that lead to driving accidents, like lack of sleep or perhaps even needing to use the restroom. Ideally, a field test would cover most of these.
Someone just over the legal alcohol limit could be less impaired than a drowsy, sober driver, but the former would be more likely to be blamed for an accident than the latter, especially in areas with really low limits (e.g. it's 0.05% here in Utah).
>Lots of behaviors impair your driving ability. A study found that being dehydrated caused the same number of driving errors as being drunk [0].
On June 12th Colorado alone surpassed 1 billion dollars in legal marijuana sales [1]
Let's be overly optimistic and assume an average customer in Colorado has spent $5,000 that means you have 200,000 customers. That's 200,000 people potentially driving while high.
How many people, of legal driving age, are dehydrated to the point of intoxication in/visiting Colorado during that time period? I'm guessing less than a thousand, probably less than 100.
What are the chances that as you mention Dale, and I Google to find out who he is, that he would have hit the news having just survived a plane crash hours ago.
I understand that everyone reacts differently to different drugs. Dale Earnhardt can probably be a little tipsy and still drive better than me. But even if you are an above average driver, it's still immoral (and I think should be illegal) to use substances that will increase your risk of killing someone else in a car accident, even if you are having a small amount of those substances that just brings you down to average driver levels.
Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death. It's an inherently risky activity to be doing every day. But we've structured our society in a way that makes it unavoidable. Given that it's dangerous even for sober people, I don't think we should be giving people the right to drive under circumstances that make it even more dangerous.