Cannabis and Car Crashes

A report has recently come out from the IIHS claiming that States with legal recreational cannabis have an increase in fatal automobile accidents.

Fortunately we IIHS also has crash report data widely available, so lets take a quick look at some of these numbers.

In 2012, before cannabis was legal in Colorado there were 433 fatal accidents, 472 deaths from a population of 5,187,582. That is a fatal accident affecting 0.008346856% of the population -- (433�/�5187582 * 100). In miles driven that is (433 / 46,606 * 100) == 0.929064927% Data is sourced from IIHS

In 2016, the latest year IIHS has published data for there were 558 fatal accidents, 608 deaths from a population of 5,540,545. In terms of population that is (558 / 5,540,545 * 100) == 0.010071211% In miles driven that is (558 / 52,993 * 100) == 1.05296926% Data sourced from IIHS

In this time frame the population in Colorado increased 6.803998472% ((5,540,545 - 5,187,582) / 5,187,582) In this time frame the fatal accidents in Colorado increased 28.868360277% ((558 - 433) / 433) In this time frame the number of deaths increased 28.813559322% ((608 - 472) / 472)

In Washington State we can see similar numbers.

https://www.skillsyouneed.com/num/percent-change.html https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview/2012 https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview/2016