Drug-impaired driving
driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of an impairing substance
Drug-impaired driving, also called driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) or drug driving, is the operation of a motor vehicle while a psychoactive drug other than - or in addition to - alcohol reduces the driver's ability to drive safely. The conduct is a criminal or administrative offense in many countries.
Drugs implicated include illicit substances, prescribed and over-the-counter medicines, and combinations of those substances with alcohol. Laboratory and epidemiological studies have documented effects on attention, tracking, reaction time and risk-taking for several drug classes. The relationship between a measured concentration in blood or oral fluid and crash risk is much clearer for alcohol than for most other drugs.
The World Health Organization treats driving under the influence of alcohol or other psychoactive substances as a major crash risk factor. It notes that the increase in crash risk varies by substance; amphetamines, for example, have been associated with about a fivefold rise in fatal-crash risk relative to non-use. Roadside surveys measure how often drugs are present in drivers, not whether those drivers are impaired. In the 2013–2014 U.S. National Roadside Survey, about one in five sampled drivers tested positive for at least one drug; the European DRUID project found lower average rates in general traffic, with large regional differences and with alcohol still the substance most often found in seriously injured and killed drivers.
Legal systems use more than one method of proof.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Drug-impaired driving” is driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of an impairing substance. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Drug-impaired, driving and motor, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of an impairing substance” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5308967. The Library of Congress control number is sh97006562. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013 and 2014.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Drug-impaired driving” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.