Impaired driving summit is planned
A California driver has been cited for using a mannequin — not the required human being — to drive in the carpool lane.
The Orange County Register reports Brea police found the mannequin Wednesday inside a truck on the congested 57 freeway.
The truck veered out of the carpool lane close to an officer’s motorcycle. As the officer attempted to warn the driver to be careful, he noticed the passenger wasn’t a passenger.
Police say the driver acknowledged using the mannequin in the carpool lane for some time. The driver told police that he would now accept that he needs to sit in traffic like everyone else.
California requires that a vehicle have a minimum of two people for carpool lanes. Driving alone requires a fine of at least $481.
A summit will be held Tuesday at the state Capitol to examine drug-impaired driving, including how the opioid epidemic and marijuana legalization have contributed to the problem.
Breath and blood tests provide good standards for measuring alcohol in a driver’s system, but it is harder to determine how other substances are affecting a driver.
“When these folks get behind the wheel, it can be difficult for law enforcement to recognize the level of impairment,” said Chuck Mai, a spokesman for AAA Oklahoma, which is sponsoring the meeting.
“Determining alcohol impairment is like kindergarten. Determining cannabis impairment is grad school.”
Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Washington, D.C., have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, and 20 states have legalized it for therapeutic and medicinal use. Oklahomans may vote on a medical marijuana initiative in two years.
A study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety showed the percentage of drivers involved in fatal Washington state crashes who recently used marijuana more than doubled from 8 percent to 17 percent between 2013 and 2014. That state legalized marijuana in December 2012.
Marijuana affects different people in different ways, so it’s difficult to arrive at accurate legal limits for the drug.
Meanwhile, increased prescription and nonprescription use of opioids poses another big problem. In 2012, 259 million prescriptions were written for opioids, which is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
Four in five new heroin users started out misusing prescription painkillers, and 94 percent of respondents in a 2014 survey of people in treatment for opioid addiction said they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were far more expensive and harder to obtain.
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, in a March report, recommended that states do a better job of compiling data on the incidence of drugged driving.
The report states “most state data on drugged driving in its current form is of limited use for measuring and tracking drugged driving incidents, evaluating the effects of changing laws regarding drug use and driving, or improving our knowledge about drug use and driving impairment.”
It also notes the difficulty of determining impairment thresholds:
“Unlike with alcohol, drug concentrations do not necessarily relate to impairment, and drugs may be detectable after impairment has subsided.”
The Oklahoma Impaired Driving Summit is set for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday in the chambers of the Oklahoma House.
Speakers include Terri White, commissioner for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services; Glenn Davis, coordinator of the Colorado Drugged Driving Task Force; Dr. Layne Subera, chairman of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics Commission; and other experts.