I have to call bull crap on our favorite friends who help us out with our flat tires.
Don't get me wrong, I love AAA (please don't cancel my membership!) but this report is all about clickbait and crap.
If you missed the Boston.com, you can read it here, AAA released a report, that, at least in the headline says there is a higher correlation in the state of Washington between fatal car crashes and marijuana, now that it is legal.
Here is your click bait headline.
Study finds connection between legal marijuana and fatal car crashes
The report goes into a study by AAA showing the increase in fatal crashes with marijuana present in the bloodstream went from 8% to 17% once weed was legalized.
Here is the total crap part.
AAA found 49 drivers involved in fatal crashes had marijuana in their system in 2013. That number jumped to 106 drivers in 2014, an increase from 8 to 17 percent of all fatal crashes. Some of these drivers also had alcohol or other drugs in their system at the time of the crash.
Oh wait, I thought it was a weed accident.
So of the extra 57 people that died you are inferring marijuana was the main contributor (per headline), some or all may have also had alcohol in their system (they were drunk driving) and maybe other drugs (like Speed or Coke?)
Having studied statics and public policy at U Chicago, there are some many problems with this report and defining as marijuana based.
1. Adding marijuana will incresae its own appearance in everything since you made it legal in society. It will also be responsible for tremendous relaxation and relief for thousands of people. It will also cause Taco Bell and Doritos sales to surge in Washington. Yes, it will also be involved in more accidents, but what about the alcohol and "other drugs" involved.
2. To give an artice this title is a hatchet job. How can you say they had alcohol in their system and other drugs, and then say weed deaths are up. It could have had some impact or no impact (no pun intended) on these accidents.
3. Sample size is way to small, can't pull anything out of numbers this small.
C'mon AAA, you can do better.
PS
For comparison, 31 percent of all traffic deaths nationwide in 2014 involved a driver under the influence of alcohol, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If weed caused all these extra accidents, it is still almost half of alcohol.