Study: A Data-Based Assessment of the Impact of Marijuana Legalisation on Vehicle Accident Experience
Recreational use of Cannabis sativa (cannabis) has been legalised in many areas in North America. One of the effects that interests insurance companies is the change in vehicle accident experience. This study summarises information on the car accident experience in Canada and several US states and provides robust estimates of the legalisation impacts based on recent methodological developments for the analysis of observational data, including machine learning and other data-driven techniques.
The study did not detect statistically significant impacts of legalisation on the car accident fatality rate, insurance claim frequency, or average cost per claim and that the estimated seasonality and pre-legalisation dynamics in Canadian vehicle insurance statistics continued after legalisation without a significant change, while in the US, temporal patterns of human activity (such as yearly, weekly and daily cycles) and inclement weather are much better predictors of the vehicle accident experience than cannabis legalisation.
22 April, 2025