In October, the Highway Loss Data Institute and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released a self-published report that suggested there’s a strong correlational link between automobile crash rates and the legalization of marijuana in states. This would be harrowing news if the finding was based upon strong scientific evidence.
Unfortunately for these institutes, though, the research data is murky at best. And because these organizations self-published the report, rather than going through the scientific peer-review process, it’s hard to take their findings seriously.
Before we begin to look at the data, readers should understand that although the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) are two distinct legal organizations, they share the same senior leadership, the same physical address, and probably a lot more. It makes it sound like these are two independent, unrelated organizations that found similar results when they pooled their collective minds, but that is not the case.
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Correlation (if it existed which does not appear to be the case) does not equal causation.
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