Where Pedestrian Deaths Are Up, Is Marijuana to Blame?
- 6 years ago
Where Pedestrian Deaths Are Up, Is Marijuana to Blame?
“I’d be cautious about drawing a direct link to any potential cause,” said Jason Levine, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety,
an advocacy group in Washington, D. C. “But it’s certainly worth trying to figure out why those numbers are what they are.”
Among the unanswered questions is whether and to what extent any link reflects marijuana use by drivers, pedestrians or both.
But this year, the group also called attention to the numbers for states
that legalized recreational marijuana between 2012 and 2016 — Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — as well as the District of Columbia, which did likewise.
Over the first six months of 2017, pedestrian fatalities rose sharply from a year earlier in states
that had legalized recreational marijuana, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.
“We are not making a definitive, cause-and-effect link to marijuana,” said Richard Retting,
a traffic safety engineer at Sam Schwartz Consulting who was the author of the study.
“I’d be cautious about drawing a direct link to any potential cause,” said Jason Levine, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety,
an advocacy group in Washington, D. C. “But it’s certainly worth trying to figure out why those numbers are what they are.”
Among the unanswered questions is whether and to what extent any link reflects marijuana use by drivers, pedestrians or both.
But this year, the group also called attention to the numbers for states
that legalized recreational marijuana between 2012 and 2016 — Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — as well as the District of Columbia, which did likewise.
Over the first six months of 2017, pedestrian fatalities rose sharply from a year earlier in states
that had legalized recreational marijuana, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.
“We are not making a definitive, cause-and-effect link to marijuana,” said Richard Retting,
a traffic safety engineer at Sam Schwartz Consulting who was the author of the study.