Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Are You Too Drugged To Drive?

The title of this article, Are You Too Drugged To Drive?, grabbed my attention this morning. I don't think so. Am I? I would know if I was, right? Not necessarily, I found out.

Every day, 10,000 Americans turn 65. 80% of drivers 65 and older regularly take medication— two-thirds take five or more daily! Yet only half have talked with a medical professional about the possible safety issues related to driving.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety is studying the risks of drug interaction and side effects affecting driving ability and say it's a growing problem not only for older drivers but for anyone who takes medication and needs to drive.

2 comments:

Charles said...

I went to the League of Women Voter General Election Forum last night, and listened to all the candidates, and then three of the ballot issues, the last one was Initiative 502, and the con gentleman said the Initiative is a smoke screen to arrest all the medical marijuana users, since the impaired driver part would mean all the medical marijuana users are too stoned to drive, and that even if they had not used the marijuana in the last three weeks it would still be in their blood sample more than the initiative allows.

SRTC Staff said...

Wow, I had no idea. Very interesting. I wonder if they start that if they'll have to start charging people who have high amounts of prescription drugs in their blood with impaired driving as well. This could open up a whole new debate.


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SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.