Use of headlights linked to traffic fatalities

Research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (DOT HS 810 637) has shown that you are roughly three times as likely to be killed on the highway if you’re traveling in a car with the headlights on.

This should be a wake-up call to legislators who have long been hoodwinked by auto industry claims that headlights are “harmless” or even beneficial.

Yeah, this would be an insanely silly news story. And yet, it is the level to which so much reporting on marijuana and driving has sunk. The truth is, of course, that you are three times more likely to be killed on the highway with the headlights on, but that’s because you’re three times more likely to be killed on the highway at night than in the daytime. It isn’t at all because you have headlights on.

[See: Matt Schmitz and Chris Woodyard at USA Today exemplify dishonest reporting on drugged driving.]

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17 Responses to Use of headlights linked to traffic fatalities

  1. Tony Aroma says:

    Research has also shown that you are roughly 300 times more likely to be killed on the highway if you’re traveling in a car. On the highway.

    • thelbert says:

      cars are not medicine, so why are they legal? because they don’t get you high. i rarely drive without being high on cannabis. the aristocrats couldn’t care less about safety, it’s the immorality and your soul they worry about. it’s their moral superiority that makes the purity of your blood and urine a paramount concern. we need to fill the prisons with aristos and their lackeys.

    • claygooding says:

      that means I am fairly safe driving on the sidewalks

  2. DdC says:

    DEA, Florida ‘Honor’ Abusive Rehab Founder, Wife of Republican Financier http://huff.to/mbMhkH via @HealthyLiving

    Behind Liz Cheney’s group, a weird legacy of torture http://www.salon.com/2010/02/10/torturedkids/ via @Salon

    GOP Mogul Behind Drug Rehab ‘Torture’ Centers
    http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/448

    Calvina Fay Prohibition Inc.
    http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1556

  3. War Vet says:

    WARNING–URGENT: As all of you already know, the 2nd Largest city in Iraq, Mosul (1.8 million) is now 100% under the control of Al Qaeda and Mosul is the gateway for much of the northern Oil flowing down to southern Iraqi ports. Al Qaeda are official Billionaires in the DOPE GAME and the Taliban only make $100 million a year and Pakistan is their political headgear which makes $4 Billion a year in Dope. They will do damage to other nations and the Iraqi people . . . they will influence economic trade the way Mexico dope peddlers did in 2008.

    Bring our troops home and CALL the Police to engage in combat missions to fight drug money and its funded fighters the way the DEA does in other nations. Ask your congress how this is worthy for our American DEAD and how this will keep us safe if Al Qaeda now pumps oil into veins as they do heroin. The Taliban will Align with the Afghan Gov and use dope money and protection to help slide up into the Body Afghan.

    We don’t just sit on Pete’s couch and come up with inventive ways to stay out of jail and keep others out or to kick cancers ass with cannabis. We’re here to also end the bloodshed that dope money can fund in the Middle East as well . . . like our neighbors in Mexico and the gang hostages in the projects and ghetto blocks of America, Rio or Paris as well.

    I just wrote to my G-Man in Washington calling him to send the Cops to Iraq and Afghanistan and Chechnya and Somalia and Africa to fight drug money before it can harm others and us. Let them know that this is the hand that Anslinger and DuPont etc dealt them and they are responsible for foreign blood spilt on foreign land. Let the people know our Government and Voters and Tax payers are responsible for Iraq and Afghanistan when it comes to the dope money funding of war from the nostrils and spoons and lungs of foreign drug users under American Contract and Treaty to keep it all illegal.

  4. Servetus says:

    Corporate yellow journalism is using the marijuana debate to sell thousands of appliances and assorted baubles to hysterical reactionaries who already know for a fact that marijuana legalization is one of the four horsemen (or horsewomen) of the apocalypse. Its readers believe the scare mongering to be facts because corporate yellow journalism tells them it’s so.

    There are penalties for being on the wrong side of history. Matt Schmitz and Chris Woodyard at USA Today exemplify the devolution of a sordid publication that uses statistics to lie and thereby betrays its underlying intent. The intentions of USA Today editors and writers are seen in the United States today as coddling a hate group that exploits marijuana consumers for profit.

    If USA Today hates you, hate them back. Search the street corners. Become an anarcho-paper-recycler. It’s fun. You will benefit the public discourse and the environment.

  5. Aside from the obvious absurdity that can be generated by manipulation of statistics and their perceived relevance, who could profit from such political steering?

    Impaired driving is not the issue being raised. Testing for content of a drug in someones blood stream or breath only matters if it can show impairment. Testing for THC does not show impairment.

    Only prohibitionists and newspapers that thrive on a controversy can possibly benefit from such an amateurish approach to reporting on news and science.

    There is always this angle too:
    War Gear Flows to Police Departments
    http://tinyurl.com/k2wov6v
    One needs lots of customers to be able to afford the neat toys that go with the job of fighting drugs.

  6. darkcycle says:

    O/T. Gonna be in Saint Louis for a few days. Any couchmates in the Gateway to the West wanna hang for an hour or so? My FB persona Is “Curtis Creek”. Or Pete might give you my e-mail if you ask real nice, and promise to clean up this pigpen of a couch….

    • War Vet says:

      Not sure, but I’m assuming STL Gonzo is, but ain’t seen him siting down much. That probably didn’t help unless anyone on here knows his FB etc.

  7. allan says:

    OT… on one of the off channels (CW, My TV) there’s always a ton of those commercials looking for patients suffering adverse side effects and looking to join lawsuits against the pharmacorps. I don’t pay much attention but enough to detect a new one the other night.

    Sorry guys, but uh… Cialis, Viagra, etc users are now showing increased risk of melanoma.

    Pot’s gonna be looking better and better to more and more people as they start dissolving from pharmaceutical use.

    • War Vet says:

      I got a free sample of one of them guys you mentioned from my pre-VA Dr. Days a few years ago–and haven’t eaten one yet. Maybe if I get older and think I can still dig acid or want to try peyote, I might move on to harder stuff for a one time experiment . . . like those you mentioned. If I cannot load it, I won’t do it. What’s next: people tinfoil-ing the sex pharmaceuticals down a gradual shiny plain.

  8. DdC says:

    the bottom line in Colorado…
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bpxv9aECIAEAfUj.jpg

    Marijuana Could Become Nevada’s Top Cash Crop too http://ow.ly/xQoJx

    if that don’t reel em in…
    Marijuana infused sex lube is a real thing, you guys. http://ow.ly/xQOM7

    “I’m convinced that this robot is capable of doing everything our cops currently do and more.” http://onion.com/1mEcIws

    POLICE STATE USA “@nytimes: Equipment made for war is ending up in local police departments http://nyti.ms/1hKsyKf @JodieEmery

  9. Crut says:

    Sheldon Adelson just cut a $2.5 million check to the losing side… again

    The newly formed group backed by Adelson, the Drug Free Florida Committee, was started by longtime GOP fundraiser Mel Sembler and his wife, Betty. It has raised $2.7 million so far and its top donors have been primarily Republicans.

    For a guy who owns a casino, it’s really surprising that he doesn’t know how to gamble very well. WaPo: Sheldon Adelson spent $93 million on the 2012 election.

  10. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .

    Oh my gosh! Does that include driving lights? Our cars have those kind of headlights and they’re never off! What a sucker I am!! Some idiot assured me that not only are headlights not dangerous, having them on might increase your visibility to drivers going the other way!!!

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