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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> I've been a daily user for over 10 years and also have a spotless driving record.

I knew a guy who drove home from bars unquestionably over the legal limit (example: 4-5 drinks in 90 minutes) every single weekend for years without getting caught or getting in accident.

It doesn’t mean he wasn’t impaired.

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That's not quite the same though. The claim is that because I'm a habitual user, I'm always impaired. Which amounts to over 100k miles of impaired driving over the last decade.

Being freshly high is probably 2 quick beers, I'd think I was baseline after maybe 45 minutes. A massive edible might be 5, and I'd take like 3 hours I'd guess.

Alcohol is so much more impairing. I think just being a daily user isn't the issue. It's the proximity to last use and obviously quantity.

Planning, good sense, and caution go a long way to compensate for physical impairment. Weed is different from booze in that booze increases risk taking, which makes driving such a danger. But that doesn’t mean weed doesn’t impair in some material way compared to baseline.

Your average driver on alcohol: goes 100 miles per hour into a tree

Your average driver on weed: drives 5 miles per hour to the taco bell drive thru

You're only expected to crash 500 or so times per 100 million miles as the base rate[0]. If you were impaired enough to have 2x or 3x the risk of crashing then it's entirely possible that you wouldn't crash, or that other factors would play a larger role.

[0] https://www.friedmansimon.com/faqs/how-common-are-car-accide...

You probably are compared to your baseline self (another comment goes more extensively on this subject) but maybe you have enough driving skills and common sense to minimize the risks somewhat.

we both know one does not get impaired by spliff or two the same way she does after drink or two.

In the south people drive drunk over the legal alcohol limit all the time, most don’t crash. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

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