According to 4autoinsurance.com, the Top 10 reasons marijuana users are safer drivers are as follows:
1. Drivers who had been using marijuana were found to drive slower, according to a 1983 NHTSA study.
2.
Marijuana users were able to drive straight and didn't have trouble staying in their own lanes, according to a 1993 NHTSA study done in the Netherlands. The same study concluded that marijuana had very little effect on overall driving ability.
3. Drivers who had smoked marijuana were less likely to try to pass other cars and were more likely to drive at a steady speed, according to a University of Adelaide study done in Australia. The study showed no danger from marijuana and driving unless the drivers had also been using alcohol.
4.
Drivers high on marijuana are less likely to drive recklessly, according to a study done in the United Kingdom in 2000 by the UK Transport Research Lab. The study was actually undertaken to prove that pot impairs driving, but instead it showed the opposite -- that stoned drivers were actually safer than many other drivers on the road.
5.
States that allow medical marijuana see a reduction in highway fatalities; for instance, Colorado and Montana have had a nine percent drop in traffic deaths and a five percent drop in beer sales.
6. Low doses of marijuana were found to have little affect on the ability to drive a car in a Canadian study in 2002. These drivers were found to be in much fewer car crashes than alcohol users.
7. Most marijuana smokers have fewer crashes because they tend to stay home instead of driving.
8. Marijuana smokers are thought to be more sober drivers; traffic information from 13 of the states where medical cannabis is legal showed that these drivers are actually safer and more careful than many other drivers on the road. These studies were conducted by the University of Colorado and Montana State University, exploring the relationship between legal medical marijuana and deaths in traffic accidents.
9. Multiple studies show that marijuana smokers are less likely to be risk takers than those who use alcohol; the studies showed that marijuana use calmed them down and made them pay more attention.
10. Cannabis smoking drivers were shown to follow other vehicles at safer distances, which made they less likely to cause or have crashes.
"Every test seemed to come up with these same results in all of the countries they were done in," 4autoinsurance.org concludes. "Even so, insurance companies will still penalize any driver in an accident that has been shown to have been smoking pot, so this doesn't give drivers free reign to smoke pot and drive."
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