Spin or ignorance/incompetence

[brainticket]

I came across this paragraph on the TAC website while doing some research.

"Drug driving is a serious road safety issue, with approximately 32% of all drivers and motorcyclists killed in 2009 found to have drugs present in their system. Cannabis and stimulants are the most commonly detected illegal drugs among drivers killed on Victoria’s roads, with around 15% of drivers and motorcyclists killed in 2009 testing positive to THC the active component of cannabis or illicit stimulant/amphetamine type drugs such as ecstasy."

I've been pulling this statement apart for days.

At first sight this looks like a deliberate attempt at distorting the public perception of drugs. The statement itself is meaningless for the following reasons -

1/ Are these 32% of drivers/motorcyclists only the at fault dead drivers/motorcyclists, or all dead drivers/motorcyclists. By using all dead drivers/motorcyclists in the stat (as it reads technically) but spinning it as the at fault drivers/motorcyclists (kind of as it reads to an average person) is a huge distortion of the facts. This statement should at least clarify this! If I'm going through a green light at 55km/h but holding my mobile phone and a truck runs the red and t-bones me I don't think I should be added to the 'mobile-phones cause accidents' statistic (of course, I'm not saying that using mobile phones while driving is safe).
2/ What drugs? Do these toxicology stats include caffeine/nicotine/paracetemol? If so one would think HOLY CRAP! That is a LOW rate - the only people dying on the roads are those not boosted up on something!
3/ All this statement is saying is what percentage of drivers/motorcyclist fatalities have drugs detected. It says nothing of how this compares to the rate of drug detection in drivers/motorcyclists who do not crash/die because we don't tend to do toxicology reports on those people. FREAKING MEANINGLESS!!! Roadside swap testing stats cannot be used for comparison because that test method is ineffective.

So, are statements like this trying to scare the reader through spinning that drug use is over represented in at fault driver fatalities, or is it just that the people writing this shit just don't know how to properly present facts (or cite sources)?

Personally, I think that there should be some accountability for this kind of public poor/mis-representation of fact.

Please discuss.

 

[headdah]

anti-drug propaganda and various inaccurate/fake/lame dumb stupiid made up facts news articles have been around for a very very very long time dude. This aint something new. Its just another article to brainwash the general public

DRUGS ARE BAD MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMK.

 

[satricion]

Okay sorry but this kind of shit from drug users really pisses me off. I am a drug user, I smoke weed most days, I take pills and acid and pretty much whatever else I can get my hands on. But for fucks sake people, you don't have to be some kind of anti-drug propaganda nazi to accept that being on drugs negatively influences your driving.

Do you really think that being on drugs does not have an adverse influence on your driving? I hear stoners talking about how driving stoned is fine but that is absolute bullshit. Being stoned slows your reflexes and fucks with your attention span. We tell funny stories about stupid things we've done while stoned, or how amazing a certain movie is stoned, because the drug has this effect. For fucks sake, do not drive stoned!

Stimulants are the same. We might feel like gods while on meth or whatever, but actually we are jittery, we overreact to minor things and often concentrate on insignificant things to the exclusion of other more objectively important things. This is fine if you want to dance or talk shit with your friends, and often leads to some crazy meth conversations and that's great - that's why we take the drug. But it doesn't improve your driving.

The same goes for alcohol, ecstasy, or whatever. In fact, nothing shits me more than people getting on their high horse when talking about how awful drunk people are, or drunk drivers or whatever, then claiming that it's totally fine to hit the meth pipe, smoke a few bongs and then get into a car. These stats don't look like anti-drug propaganda to me. There is plenty of anti-drug propaganda around, but this is not it. Do not drive on drugs! Drugs fuck with your head - that's why we take them. If you think driving on drugs is fine then you are kidding yourself.

 

[brainticket]

@satricion

At no point in my OP did I claim what you are projecting on me. I'm only talking about distortion of facts in public reporting. Drugs probably do negatively affect driving ability, but that has nothing to do with this topic. I'm not sure that you fully understood or even fully read my OP.

But it is interesting to see that even people on this forum can completely miss the point of a piece of text, let alone the general public.

 

[satricion]

Basically I think you're overreacting to some fairly innocuous stats from the TAC because like many people you are defensive about the way drug use is commonly portrayed by the government. Which is fair enough but there are better battles to fight.

 

[Halif]

Interesting thread and discussion so far.

I try my best not drive when I'm affected by something. The problem for me is the lingering effects of some things (like benzos) that can last for days without me really noticing it. I'd never go anywhere if I waited for the remnants of all substances to get out of my system. Worse still is the lingering mental effects. I tend to feel anxious two days after a heavy drinking session. I mean, the day after I'm just hungover, but the day after that I feel jittery and my driving is slightly impaired.

My worst ever driving, however, hasn't come from being intoxicated, but rather being stone cold sober and in a bad mood. When I'm angry I drive badly. It's something I really have to watch and learn to control better.

 

[DeathDomokun]

Seeing as Cannabis stays in the system for up to a month, where's the evidence that they were under the influence when the crash occurred?

 

[footscrazy]

Basically I think you're overreacting to some fairly innocuous stats from the TAC because like many people you are defensive about the way drug use is commonly portrayed by the government. Which is fair enough but there are better battles to fight.

I wholeheartedly agree that driving whilst under the influence of drugs is irresponsible and dangerous, but I also strongly disagree that those stats are innocuous.

The lack of clarity around these stats means they lose all credibility to support either side of the argument. This may not be the most important or dangerous obscuration of facts, but when taken with the rest of the media about drugs, it renders the valuable message that you have specifically raised, worthless. If it was well researched, factual and presented without spin, it may serve as an apt indication to drug users of just how dangerous driving under the influence of drugs is. Instead, any sensible person will pass over it, seeing it as just another piece of useless propoganda, and any value it may have had is lost.

Any sensible, intelligent person will know that driving under the influence is silly, but I would argue that being presented with well supported facts conveys that message in a much more accessible way than just a general 'don't drive on drugs'. A potentially valuable message has been obscured simply to support the 'war on drugs'. Propoganda and spin don't just spread misinformation, they directly obscure factual information and valuable messages, hinder education, and thus contribute to harm. To me, this is the crux of the issue.

 

[spacejunk]

^ agreed. statistics presented as "facts" act as very persuasive pieces of information.
like the use of forensics in a court case however, it is the context of the statistics that is important in interpreting them.
the vagueness of this context? who knows.
what i do know is that there has been a constant flow of "drugs are bad/dangerous" messages in the media for decades.
it is how the state/establishment justifies the huge amount of resources put into prosecuting drug users, and maintaining the numerous irrational measures put in place to do so.

nobody here is advocating or attempting to justify drug driving.
driving on drugs is something we should all discourage - it is one of the riskiest things about drug-taking, if people do decide to do it, and gives us all a bad name.
the propaganda game is a complicated one. have you noticed how many pro-legalisation/decriminalisation articles have popped up in the australian press this year? there has to be a backlash pointing out the dangers (real or perceived) of drug taking.
as for whether the figures and their context are deliberately misleading or just badly presented...it's hard to say.
sensationalism sells papers; but then again, deadlines can lead to lazy journalism. it's hard to say, but it wouldn't be the first time facts have been twisted to highlight the 'scourge' of 'drugs'.

 

[CrayZ]

...

The lack of clarity around these stats means they lose all credibility to support either side of the argument. This may not be the most important or dangerous obscuration of facts, but when taken with the rest of the media about drugs, it renders the valuable message that you have specifically raised, worthless. If it was well researched, factual and presented without spin, it may serve as an apt indication to drug users of just how dangerous driving under the influence of drugs is. Instead, any sensible person will pass over it, seeing it as just another piece of useless propoganda, and any value it may have had is lost.

... A potentially valuable message has been obscured simply to support the 'war on drugs'. Propoganda and spin don't just spread misinformation, they directly obscure factual information and valuable messages, hinder education, and thus contribute to harm. To me, this is the crux of the issue.

You said exactly what I wanted to - only far more eloquently. It's how you educate 3 year olds.

 

[Ticket]

The fact is that there is plenty of stuff that can go terrifyingly wrong while using drugs without having to make up purposefully misleading statistics and 'facts' to back up that point. It's not in the pursuit of HR that these kinds of things are reported, it's trying to breed fear and ignorance, make drugs out to be some kind of big, evil boogeyman that will eat your children. I think the misrepresentation of facts surrounding drugs/drug use/drug fatalities/etc is always (whether directly or indirectly) leading to much more harm than good. I'm sure plenty of others would agree with me. We know driving on any strong mild-altering substance is a bad idea (well, hopefully we do. I certainly do), but misleading statistics may make people think that otherwise innocuous drugs are far more dangerous than they are, that there is a high instance of people causing fatalities because of them than there is, which can lead to more people being more afraid of drugs, pushing more propaganda and certainly not creating an atmosphere that is conducive of an open discussion, proper education, HR, etc. And people will still use, but once they find out that *propaganda* is bullshit, they might start to think that *actual risk* is bullshit too and take more unnecessary risks. People really do die because of drugs, they really can ruin lives. We don't need to make up scary shit to keep people off drugs... That's like the abstinence only sex-ed classes, hahaha - 'Don't have sex. Because you WILL get pregnant. And die.'

Sorry if this was a bit of a ramble, or slightly off-topic. I'm a bit sleep deprived *blinks* Eurgh.

 

[DeathDomokun]

On this note, I really hate it when the government does this. Rape for example, when you start including the sexual acts of people under the legal age of consent, and 'people of the state' or whatever they call prisoners and orphans, as rape, it makes the statistics useless. This is just an example, but what agitates me the most is the willingness of the majority to just accept some statistic as fact without further investigation, and then identify that statistic (usually of a small portion of the populous) as reality and it skews their perception of the world into the delusional state of fear the government tries to impress upon us so they can continue to do their unjustified bullshit 'for the good of the people'