(edited title to correct that this happened in Belgium, not the Netherlands)
For those who don’t speak Dutch, some more details:
- driver was under the influence of drugs (cannabis), 4x the allowed amount
- driver did not maintain proper distance from the cyclist.
- the court and/or prosecutors were way too slow in collecting information and actually sending that information, leading to the driving under influence part to expire and thus no longer be able to be prosecuted. They also missed the deadline for getting/providing a report from a traffic expert.
This is quite a fucked up situation. The justice system failed them and then the gall of the driver to then sue thèm is quite… something.
Driver not maintaining proper distance is a conclusion as shared by the cyclist family from their privately hired traffic expert. 4 months after closing the case the police expert ruled the car driver not at fault. Both are circumspect.
In Belgium distance to the bicyclist when overtaking is codified as being 1m within a built up area and 1.5m outside built up areas. In the Netherlands this is just defined as overtaking needing to be done safely. I doubt this rule is observed and penalized much in Belgium. According to the hired expert if proper distance was observed in the overtaking the front wheel would still be clipped. No clue about how much cannabis use and effects on reaction time would have changed the situation.
A tragedy which is not clear cut. As such, should have been in the courts hands or handled within time limits by the police. Now the family is filled with uncertainty, kept out of the loop, denied closure, trying to pursue the matter themselves, and getting sued? That’s a sad comment on Belgian policing if I’ve ever written one.
No clue about how much cannabis use and effects on reaction time would have changed the situation.
What about being on drugs affecting driver’s judgment?
Fair point, apparently judgement, reaction time, concentration and control of vehicle can all be reduced.
The driver is a piece of shit, but what is the legal limit for marijuana, and how is the level determined?
Because thc stay in your system, 14 days for blood tests, 30 for pee tests, and like 90 for hair tests, as I recall, and there is no test to see if you are high now, you can test 100x above the legal limit despite having taken zero thc in days in fact.
Legal limits in legal states in the US are around 4 ng/ml, an ifitestimally low amount. Before legalization, any amount, despite false positives as high as 40 percent at levels labeled 1 ng/ml, (they round up if less.)
Edit: I looked it up, they use a different metric than the US ng/ml, they use micrograms/liter, of which their limit is 3 for thc while driving.
Testing is done with roadside saliva test, followed by a blood test for actionable information. Saliva test purportedly can tell if it’s been used within 3 days. I didn’t look at false positives or anything yet.
But the laws are dishonest bullshit.
I looked it up, they use a different metric than the US ng/ml, they use micrograms/liter
That’s identical: 1 ng/ml = 10^-9 g/(10^-3 l) = 10^-6 g/l = 1 ug/l
Belgium’s minimum limit is a third of surrounding countries. So 4 times the legal limit would only be 33% above the legal minimum limit in the Netherlands and Germany.
The minimum limit doesn’t imply any sort of intoxication though. It is the amount where usage of the drug becomes proven in a legal context. This of course means that none of these drug tests prove driving while intoxicated as you can easily get a positive test while being sober.
I personally already had multiple positive tests while driving sober. It’s an awful system that punishes drug users for their drug use and not for any DUI. The fact that they focus more on the test than actually talking about stuff like his speech and mental state when police arrived on the scene shows a lot. They just want to punish the guy as hard as possible and make him look like a criminal.
What gives you the idea there wouldn’t be a test to see how high you are at the time of the accident? You’re taken to the station, they call a doctor who comes over at any time of the day, draws blood and they determine the amount of THC in ng per mL of blood serum or plasma. Legal thresholds are based on that measure as well.
Belgium has a threshold of 1ng/mL of plasma. If you’ve been a heavy, daily user and your blood shows detectable levels of THC (which it totally does, yes) 7 days after, you can’t drive, simple as that - that’s how the law works and the fault is on you.
What gives you the idea there wouldn’t be a test to see how high you are at the time of the accident?
I dunno, maybe the part where
If you’ve been a heavy, daily user and your blood shows detectable levels of THC (which it totally does, yes) 7 days after, you can’t drive, simple as that - that’s how the law works and the fault is on you.
If I can be stone cold sober for 7 days and fail the test, your test has absolutely no fucking clue if I’m actually high.
The blood test can distinguish between active 11-OH-THC and the metabolized THC-COOH. The first is only elevated if the consume of THC has happened recently. The latter is constantly elevated in case of regular consume.
Does that mean you’re contradicting the other guy’s claim that you could fail after not smoking for a week? That’s what it sounds like to me. And this sounds more reasonable for legal decisions, if and only if it can make the distinction with high accuracy.
Yes. You pass the test, as you are not currently under influence of THC.
There’s a pretty easy way not to get busted. Either don’t smoke so much you’re over the limit seven days later or don’t drive. Driving is a privilege and I’d rather some sober people aren’t allowed to drive because of choices they themselves made, than allow some stoned people drive because the test isn’t perfect.
If your test is so completely shit its incarcerating innocent people, we should not be doing it. That’s not innocent until proven guilty.
And before you say “well the law says…”, the law is attempting to stop intoxicated drivers. It completely fails at that job because it cannot properly distinguish sober from intoxicated.
Except it does stop intoxicated drivers. And I will say if the law says it’s illegal to drive with X amount of THC metabolites in your blood stream and you are over that limit because you smoked weed, then you shouldn’t be driving. Again: driving is a privilege. If you want to drive then it’s up to you to stay under the limit and it isn’t hard to do. If that means you can’t smoke as much weed as you’d like to that’s too bad.
The fact of the matter is that there simply is no way to reliably test whether someone is actively impaired from cannabis, due to the way THC is metabolised in the body. So we are stuck with the laws as they exist or the alternative is essentially letting people drive while high. How you can find that to be the better choice is honestly baffling to me.
Except it does stop intoxicated drivers.
But it doesn’t stop only intoxicated drivers. It gets plenty of false positives and legally endangers safe, sober drivers for something that is no longer effecting them. Claiming it stops intoxicated drivers is like claiming that shooting everyone would kill murderers. Sure, but you’re awfully okay with collateral damage. It’s completely unreasonable to the point of making it illegal to smoke weed if you routinely drive, not just making it illegal to drive while intoxicated.
If you want to drive then it’s up to you to stay under the limit and it isn’t hard to do.
If your limit isn’t about actual intoxication, it is the wrong limit for the job, period. Anything else is blatantly admitting that you’re totally fine imprisoning innocent, responsible people for failing to meet an arbitrary and frankly asinine limit.
The fact of the matter is that there simply is no way to reliably test whether someone is actively impaired from cannabis, due to the way THC is metabolised in the body.
There are ways to test your impairment, which is the thing you actually care about, supposedly. They’re not perfect, but they’re a HELL of a lot better than the bullshit test you’re pitching.
How you can find that to be the better choice is honestly baffling to me.
American principle of innocence until proven guilty. You’re quite happy to punish innocent people with a test that, by your own admission, completely and utterly fails at detection of intoxication and can only report consumption in the semi-recent past. How many innocent lives are you willing to ruin over this? Like, give me an actual percentage. What false conviction rate is acceptable to you? 1%? 10%? 50%?
Yeah, let’s make the legal penalty for driving sober, but after having consumed THC in the last few days the exact same as just driving high as a kite. I’m sure there’s no perverse incentives there at all
What’s your suggestion then? Because it simply isn’t possible to reliably test whether someone is currently und the effect of cannabis. The alternative would be to not be able to enforce it at all. I really don’t understand why you seem to have such an issue with this. Either don’t smoke weed all the time or don’t drive. It’s not that hard.
You could use the same definition on a heavy drinker who doesn’t feel drunk with only 1 ‰.
Mate, if you drank enough to be impacted seven days later, you’d be dead. For THC, my understanding is that it’s generally mostly or fully metabolized well before then, and we typically test for metabolites, not raw psychoactive ingredients. Those metabolites aren’t something your body rushes to excrete like with most hard drugs. In other words, after a week of not smoking, you are sober, but you could still fail this drug test.
I was not talking about having 1 ‰ after a week, but about drinkers who are keeping their level constantly without “feeling” drunk.
You are comparing unrelated things. These are 2 different substances that impair and metabolize in 2 different ways.
So just because a constant drunk would say the same thing as someone who hadn’t consumed in a week, the guy who’s been sober can’t be trusted?
7 days after, you can’t drive
Well that’s simply insane. Imagine getting a dui because of a glass of wine you had a week ago. Sounds like you argued his point for him. It isn’t a reliable test.
If alcohol still influences your driving after a week, the yes, you should absolutely be getting a dui
Bro, you aren’t high a week after smoking a joint. Please stop.
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass on the ground. Neither “ifs” are actually real, though.
That you don’t know that they can’t tell if you are high right now, shows that you have lived a sheltered and blessed life for one thing, and also that you speak confidently of things you know nothing about.
It’s common knowledge, I’m not trading sources to argue objective fact, I get enough of that in politics.
As to the process, yeah no shit that’s how everyone does it, US included, except we send it to state police crime labs that then further lie about it. You must be taking their testimony and not that of objective fact.
Ah yes, you smoke and then can’t drive at all for a week. That’s totally a well written law. /s
That “proof” should be laughed out of any court. It doesn’t prove you were under the influence at the time. At all.
No, the law is not ideal, and yes, I do find the implications questionable as well. Some people could end up not being able to drive for multiple weeks.
However, that was the trade off that had to be made. People want weed to be legal, which it absolutely should be. Let’s not forget this thread started out with outrage about a guy whon ran over a kid. Now, there are no tests that offer insights into a shorter, more recent time window of consumption, so how are we going to resolve the question if that driver was driving under the influence?
The law made a compromise, that, according to studies, mostly affects heavy users that consume THC daily, and yes, for those people, the law currently does not represent an ideal resolution. But that doesn’t even apply to all people who smoke or otherwise consume weed, and it can be resolved by the introduction of better tests without rewriting the law while providing the necessary framework for legalization.
I’d prefer for weed to be legal and not being able to drive for a week than to be arrested, treated like a rapist by cops and then to be dragged to court for the possession of miniscule amounts of THC, which was the previous state.
The issue is that smoking marijuana does impair driving, meaning you shouldn’t drive. The law needs some kind of proof that doesn’t rely on a time machine, so they test your body. Your body can’t really tell you when the thc entered your body, so you get two options:
- The test can still prove you were under the influence at some recent-ish moment, so any sufficient amount in your blood means you can’t drive.
- The test can’t prove it’s recent enough for you to have been impaired while driving, so it can’t be used as proof, which effectively means you could never be convicted of being under the influence (meaning it’s unenforceable).
The former negatively impacts marijuana users who won’t be able to drive for some time. The latter means people under the influence could drive and due to their impairment hit and kill someone.
Somewhat obviously, the lawmakers have decided that blocking some people from driving is better than letting someone under the influence drive a speedy death machine. So the law doesn’t care whether you were actually impaired; it was in your system, so you’re not allowed to drive.
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Unbelievably fucked. It’s supposed to be one of the safest places to bike too
You forgot to mention that the driver is now suing the parents of the dead kid for damages to his car, €8000
I didn’t mention that, because that’s in the title
I am dumb, sorry
I am confident the driver was Belgian, not Dutch, which does not otherwise make a difference.
Well spotted, I’ve fixed the title
Appreciated!
He should receive damages to his nutsack
Only question is how many needles and for how many weeks
You can sue someone’s parents for what their kid did? The parents didn’t have any role in this that I can see, what a piece of shit this driver must be.
Yes, parents are usually responsible for their children. Ignoring all the other horrifying issues with this situation.
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