Most countries have laws against driving while impaired by drugs; however, in many countries, including Canada, police must have probable cause to suspect that the driver has used an impairing substance before they can enforce these laws. This report studies police documentation of drug involvement in drivers who had a motor-vehicle crash after using an impairing substance. We prospectively obtained samples of blood that remained after clinical use, and police reports on injured drivers treated in participating British Columbia trauma centres following a crash. Blood was analyzed for alcohol, cannabinoids, other recreational drugs, and impairing medications. Corresponding police reports were examined to determine whether police suspect that impairment by alcohol, drugs, or medications was a contributing factor for the crash. We obtained blood samples and corresponding police reports on 1816 injured drivers. Mean driver age was 44 years, 63.2% were male, and 25.8% were admitted to hospital. Alcohol was detected in 272 drivers (15.0%), THC (tetrahydrocannabinol - the active ingredient in cannabis) in 136 (7.5%), other recreational drugs in 166 (9.1%), and impairing medications in 363 (20.0%). Police suspected alcohol as a contributory factor in 64.1% of alcohol positive drivers, drugs as contributory factor in 5.9% of drivers who tested positive for THC, and in 16.9% of drivers who tested positive for other recreational drugs. Medications were suspected in 2.2% of drivers who had used an impairing medication. blank Police crash reports seldom document drug involvement in crash involved drivers who used cannabis, other recreational drugs, or impairing medications. This finding has significant implications for the ability of police to enforce laws against drug-impaired driving, and for the ability of public health officials to use police crash reports to monitor the prevalence of drug-impaired driving.<\/p>\n
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brubacher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[342,346],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carsp-conference-acpser-victoria-2018","category-research-and-evaluation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17509"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18305,"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions\/18305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}