Drug Abuse and Driving Performance

Blomberg, Richard D.; Preusser, David F. · 1972 · ROSA P / United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Summary

This 1972 study, conducted by Dunlap and Associates for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, investigated the relationship between narcotic drug abuse, methadone maintenance treatment, and driving performance. The research was motivated by contradictory findings in previous literature regarding whether drug users exhibited higher accident and violation rates. A key objective was to determine if methadone patients should be prohibited from driving and to assess the safety risks associated with driving under the influence of narcotics. The researchers collected data from 1,562 methadone maintenance patients in New York State through face-to-face interviews. To create a comparison group, these subjects provided the names of 1,059 non-addicted peers, from which 579 control driver records were obtained. Official traffic records were retrieved for 718 experimental subjects and the 579 controls. The study analyzed driving characteristics across four distinct periods in the subjects' lives: pre-drug use, non-heroin drug use, heroin addiction, and methadone maintenance. Interview data provided self-reported mileage estimates and details on driving behavior relative to drug use, while traffic records provided objective data on accidents and violations. The results indicated that experimental subjects drove at or above the national average mileage during all four periods, with heroin addicts reporting particularly high mileage (averaging over 18,000 miles per year), much of which was driven immediately after drug use. Despite this high exposure and frequent driving while under the influence, the experimental group did not exhibit worse accident or moving violation rates than the control group over the five-year period covered by the records. The only significant difference in violation rates was that experimental subjects had more infractions related to improper equipment or documents. The study found no evidence that non-narcotic drug abuse significantly increased accident rates compared to other users of the same drugs. The authors concluded that narcotic abusers, particularly heroin addicts, appear to successfully compensate for any performance degradation caused by drugs, likely due to fear of discovery, arrest, or accidents. This compensation appears strong enough to offset their high driving exposure. Consequently, the study found no evidence to support prohibiting methadone patients or narcotic addicts as a group from driving. The authors noted that these findings apply specifically to the studied population of young, male Caucasian methadone patients in New York State and should be generalized with caution.

Key finding

Methadone maintenance patients and narcotic drug abusers had accident and moving violation rates no worse than those of matched controls, despite driving significantly above the national average mileage and often immediately after drug use.

Methodology

mixed_methods

Sample size: 1562

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• illicit drugs
• opioids
• polydrug
• cannabis
• exposure measurement

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence
• Methodological Resource: dataset resource