I have developed a new public health app that measures actual impairment–it is called DRUID (an acronym for “DRiving Under the Influence of Drugs”) available now in the Apple App Store (Android version coming soon). DRUID measures reaction time, decision making, hand-eye coordination, time estimation and balance, and then statistically integrates hundreds of data points into an overall impairment score. DRUID takes just 5 minutes (and the 2-minute version will be part of the DRUID app very soon).
I have been working with the Massachusetts Police to test the efficacy of DRUID.
DRUID allows marijuana users (or others who drink alcohol, use prescription drugs, etc.) to self-assess their own level of impairment and (hopefully) decide against driving if they are impaired. Prior to DRUID, there was no way for an individual to accurately assess their own level of impairment. DRUID also demonstrates that it is feasible to measure impairment reliably by the roadside, not just exposure to a drug.
After obtaining my Ph.D. at Harvard, I have been a professor of psychology at UMass/Boston for the past 40 years, specializing in research methods, measurement and statistics.
Michael Milburn, Professor
Department of Psychology
UMass/Boston
Interesting idea. How do you get around the issue that different people inherently have different baselines? For example, a 30 year old would have quicker reaction times than an 80 year old, but that doesn’t mean the 80 year old is under the influence of any drug/alcohol.
Couldn’t sleep be a factor in the rating too? If I take the test immediately after waking up, wouldn’t my reaction time and coordination be significantly “worse” than if I took the test after drinking a 20oz cup of coffee?
People will have different baselines, generally ranging from 30-42 on the DRUID scale (it goes from 0-100, with most scores between 30-70). For a person to be impaired at close to the .08 BAC level, that would be a DRUID score of 58 or higher. More research is needed, but data I recently collected at the Massachusetts Regional Police Academy with alcohol-intoxicated volunteers showed that it’s possible to set a limit for the DRUID score where a person could be judged legally impaired on cannabis that obtains no false positives.
Sleep, prescription drugs–all these things could affect impairment. But in our data, using the average of the intoxicated volunteers DRUID scores as the limit, none of the sober volunteers had a DRUID score above that limit.
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I have developed a new public health app that measures actual impairment–it is called DRUID (an acronym for “DRiving Under the Influence of Drugs”) available now in the Apple App Store (Android version coming soon). DRUID measures reaction time, decision making, hand-eye coordination, time estimation and balance, and then statistically integrates hundreds of data points into an overall impairment score. DRUID takes just 5 minutes (and the 2-minute version will be part of the DRUID app very soon).
Our website is http://www.druidapp.com
I have been working with the Massachusetts Police to test the efficacy of DRUID.
DRUID allows marijuana users (or others who drink alcohol, use prescription drugs, etc.) to self-assess their own level of impairment and (hopefully) decide against driving if they are impaired. Prior to DRUID, there was no way for an individual to accurately assess their own level of impairment. DRUID also demonstrates that it is feasible to measure impairment reliably by the roadside, not just exposure to a drug.
After obtaining my Ph.D. at Harvard, I have been a professor of psychology at UMass/Boston for the past 40 years, specializing in research methods, measurement and statistics.
Michael Milburn, Professor
Department of Psychology
UMass/Boston
Interesting idea. How do you get around the issue that different people inherently have different baselines? For example, a 30 year old would have quicker reaction times than an 80 year old, but that doesn’t mean the 80 year old is under the influence of any drug/alcohol.
Couldn’t sleep be a factor in the rating too? If I take the test immediately after waking up, wouldn’t my reaction time and coordination be significantly “worse” than if I took the test after drinking a 20oz cup of coffee?
People will have different baselines, generally ranging from 30-42 on the DRUID scale (it goes from 0-100, with most scores between 30-70). For a person to be impaired at close to the .08 BAC level, that would be a DRUID score of 58 or higher. More research is needed, but data I recently collected at the Massachusetts Regional Police Academy with alcohol-intoxicated volunteers showed that it’s possible to set a limit for the DRUID score where a person could be judged legally impaired on cannabis that obtains no false positives.
Sleep, prescription drugs–all these things could affect impairment. But in our data, using the average of the intoxicated volunteers DRUID scores as the limit, none of the sober volunteers had a DRUID score above that limit.