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Comment by hirvi74 | Hacker News Reader

I am somewhat skeptical of the car crash research. Being "involved" in a car accident does not paint a clear enough picture. I think it would be more interesting to see that data on whether people with ADHD are more likely to be found at fault in car accidents.

With cellphones and other distractions now, I feel like the data would be even harder to parse through. Is a person with ADHD more likely than the average person to text while driving? I do not think that would be an incorrect assumption, but I would like to see data suggesting this.

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Fault is a tricky term in this context.

Humans face a number of challenges when driving. Cars, roads, laws, traffic systems, etc. have all evolved to help them meet those challenges, but it is all shaped by our expectations of the humans. When a human doesn't perform to those expectations, we say it is their fault. When an accident occurs despite them meeting those expectations, it's not their fault.

But folks with ADHD have brains that don't match society's expectations; cars, roads, laws, traffic systems, etc. have not evolved to help them. Their brains are effectively a chaos factor for all the safeguards we have in place... Even their advantages can be disadvantages because everything was designed to help someone who didn't have them.

Even if an accident wasn't their fault, I think it's quite credible that people with ADHD might just be more likely to be in situations where there is a higher risk of an accident... and I'd expect it'd be more common for accidents to be their "fault", because again, how we determine fault is defined by expectations they conform to.

> Fault is a tricky term in this context.

I was talking more from a legal perspective -- where a party's actions or negligence is the direct cause or a significant contributing factor to an accident.

> But folks with ADHD have brains that don't match society's expectations

I live it every day.

> Even their advantages

There are no advantages. I have yet to see something that a person with ADHD can do that a person without ADHD cannot do that can be solely attributed to ADHD and no other factors.

So, I am going to cut straight to the heart of this argument. Do you believe in free will or not? I do not. At least not in a complete sense of the idea; however, I am not sure society can function without some level of belief in free will.

If a person with ADHD kills another person in a vehicular accident, should they be automatically free of punishment because it's not their fault? If not, then that is perhaps even more morbid. It's like saying, "We know it's not your fault, but here is some punishment anyway."

As for evolution, countless variants of countless species on this planet have been lost with the sands of time due to natural selection. Their inability to adapt to the environment around them was not their fault, but as evolution shows us -- too bad. And honestly, that mirrors my experiences with life with ADHD. It sucks, it's not fair, but too bad. The universe owes no one anything.

> There are no advantages. I have yet to see something that a person with ADHD can do that a person without ADHD cannot do that can be solely attributed to ADHD and no other factors.

Oh, there are lots of benefits. ADHD people tend to be able to react quicker & think more clearly during emergencies. They tend to be better able to find connections between disparate ideas. That's just a couple. For obvious reasons, the disadvantages tend to overshadow the advantages, but everything is a trade-off. It's not 100% negative. A lot of learning to live with ADHD is learning to create contexts that play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. It's harder to create those contexts than if your mind more adequately meets society's expectations, but it can be done.

> If a person with ADHD kills another person in a vehicular accident, should they be automatically free of punishment because it's not their fault?

Okay, that is really, really not where I was going with this.

> Their inability to adapt to the environment around them was not their fault, but as evolution shows us -- too bad.

Ah, but we've reached a point where predominantly we adapt our environment to us rather than adapt to our environment. Those roads these cars drive on didn't come from nature.

> The universe owes no one anything.

I think I've completely failed to communicate my point to you. I don't know how to correct it beyond saying this is not at all what I was trying to say.

Here's a starting spot, maybe especially the paper in footnote 4.

https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-driving-risks-research-safe...

Thank you for sharing this. This is what I have been looking for.

Tangental but related, but I think I read somewhere on YN that Canada was proposing a law that would legally require people with ADHD to be medicated if they wanted to obtain a driver's license. Not sure what, if anything, ever became of that idea, but it's interesting nonetheless.

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