Cannabis use and car crashes are two important issues that have been studied extensively. But there are also a lot of factors that could be taken into consideration when it comes to the relationship between cannabis use and car crashes.
Some factors studies decided to look at were age, biological sex and recent alcohol consumption.
The effect of age
Age is an important factor to consider in many aspects of life, not just in the case of cannabis use and car crashes. Consider the fact that you have to reach a certain age before you can your driver’s license, before you can vote, gamble, and of course, drink.
There is a reason many things in our lives are age dependent, and it is because as we get older, our brains continue to develop and we are able to understand certain things better and become more mature.
When it comes to cannabis use and car crashes, through extensive studies it has been found that younger people are more likely to use cannabis and they are also more likely to be involved in car crashes.
In Australia, Canada, the U.S., and the E.U., studies have shown that people aged 18-30 use cannabis more frequently than people aged 40-60. In fact, the usage rate is about five times higher for younger people than for older people in the E.U.
Similarly, studies have found that younger people are more likely to be involved in car crashes, with the crash rate highest for drivers aged 16-17 and declining sharply until 30-40 years.
The studies suggest that the age difference between cannabis users and non-users could be a surprising factor in the relationship between cannabis use and car crashes. Basically, it may not be just the cannabis use that is causing
the increased crash risk but also the age of the users.
To estimate the size of this bias, a rough rule-of-thumb is that people aged 35 or less have three times the cannabis usage rate of people aged over 35 and double the overall crash rate.
Therefore, it is essential to account for the age-related staggering bias when examining the relationship between cannabis use and car crashes.
The effect of biological sex
Age was not the only thing that was considered in the studies that examined a connection between cannabis use and car crashes. The sex of a person was also something that was considered.
Studies have found that men are more likely to use cannabis and more likely to be involved in serious injury and fatal crashes than women. In Australia, men are about twice as likely as women to have used cannabis in the previous week, although this difference decreases over longer periods of time. Similar gender differences have been found in Canada and the U.S.
For less severe crashes, the involvement rates for men and women are often quite similar. In Canada, it was found that men are more likely to be involved in serious-injury crashes requiring hospitalization and twice as likely as
women to be involved in fatal crashes.
While considering all this information, it is important to note that just like with age, the gender differences observed in both cannabis use and car crashes may not be just the cannabis use that is causing the increased crash
risk.
The effect of recent alcohol consumption
In conducting these studies, it was also found that people who use cannabis and alcohol tend to use them at the same time. In the Roche et al. (2019) study, it was found that the use of alcohol doubled the chance of cannabis use on a particular day. A good way to estimate the size of the alcohol-related bias is that people who have recently used alcohol are twice as likely to have recently used cannabis.
Alcohol has been found to be a major factor in road crashes. The overall involvement of all blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) has been investigated in various countries, including Canada, and has been found to increase the risk of being involved in a road crash.
When it comes to the relationship between cannabis and road crashes, it is hard to ignore the above studies that add an extra layer of depth to the correlation between the two. Whether it be age, sex or the use of alcohol, each of these factors could have a very real impact on the way cannabis use affects the way a person drives and therefore affects their likelihood to crash.
