Is driving high as bad as drinking and driving

Driving while impaired by alcohol, illicit drugs, genuine medication or plain over-tiredness is always bad, inexcusable, and in some countries at least, illegal.

Tiredness was added to the list in the UK a few years ago, after some horrific "accidents" due to it. I think the tipping-point was that of a lorry smashing into the back of a school minibus, on a motorway, after its driver had nodded off.

At least some of the motorway service-areas are now heralded about two miles in advance, before you reach the advance signs for the services' entrances, by signs saying starkly -



Obviously if the drug itself is also illegal, you are committing two offences by driving under its influence; and open to being charged for both. If you cause an accident by any wilful impairment your insurance would almost certainly be null and void. And it would all be your own fault.

I passed a road-side matrix sign recently that, having no road-closure or other specific information to show, displayed this advice to anyone suspecting the offences being committed:-