As cannabis laws loosen and opioid use rises, experts warn the U.S. is falling behind in tracking deadly drug-impaired crashes.

On a calm September morning in western Colorado, two highway workers stepped onto the shoulder of U.S. Highway 6 for what should have been a routine assignment. Nathan Jones and Trent Umberger were replacing a road sign when a Jeep Grand Cherokee suddenly swerved off the highway and crashed directly into them.

The impact killed both workers instantly. A passenger inside the SUV also died.

Investigators later discovered that the driver had oxycodone in his system along with THC levels reportedly far above Colorado’s presumed impairment threshold. He eventually pleaded guilty to multiple counts of vehicular homicide and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

For the victims’ families, the tragedy left a permanent wound.

“Our four children are completely crushed without their Dad,” Trent Umberger’s wife wrote in a victim impact statement that captured the devastation left behind by the crash.

But beyond the heartbreak, the case highlighted a growing issue that transportation experts say America still doesn’t fully understand — the true scale of drug-impaired driving.

For years, federal agencies have carefully monitored alcohol-related crashes across the country. Drunk driving statistics are detailed, standardized, and widely available. Drugged driving, however, remains a far murkier picture.

Unlike alcohol, many drugs can remain detectable in the body long after their effects wear off. Cannabis, opioids, antidepressants, cocaine, sedatives, and other substances affect people differently, making it difficult for investigators to determine whether a driver was actually impaired at the moment of a crash.

That scientific uncertainty has created a major gap in America’s road safety system.

Colorado, for example, allows drivers to be presumed impaired if THC levels exceed five nanograms per liter of blood. But legal experts and toxicologists argue that the threshold lacks the kind of scientific consensus that exists for alcohol impairment standards.

And Colorado is not alone.

As cannabis legalization expands across the United States and the opioid crisis continues to grip communities, researchers say the need for reliable data on drug-impaired driving has never been greater. Yet efforts to collect that data are now slowing down.

Safety researchers warn that the country is trying to tackle a major public safety problem without fully understanding how widespread it actually is.

A 2022 study by the National Transportation Safety Board revealed troubling trends. Researchers found that many impaired drivers tested positive for multiple substances at once, including combinations of drugs and alcohol. They also discovered that only a handful of states consistently tested fatally injured drivers for drugs, leaving large holes in national crash data.

Experts say incomplete testing means thousands of cases may never be accurately categorized.

“If you want to solve a problem, you need to understand the problem,” one NTSB researcher said, stressing that poor data limits the nation’s ability to create effective solutions.

Without clear information, lawmakers, police departments, and public health officials struggle to develop accurate awareness campaigns, enforcement strategies, and safety policies.

Federal transportation agencies had started making progress toward improving the system. Researchers launched pilot programs involving trauma centers and medical examiner offices in an attempt to build broader surveillance networks capable of tracking drug-related crashes more effectively.

California became one of the key testing grounds for the effort.

The state’s pilot program produced startling results. Researchers found that nearly 44% of drivers treated in emergency rooms after crashes had at least one potentially impairing substance in their bloodstream.

Safety experts believed findings like those could help reshape public awareness around drugged driving.

But momentum has faded in recent years.

Following major federal workforce reductions under President Donald Trump’s administration after his return to office in 2025, staffing levels inside the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration dropped sharply. Several employees involved in impaired-driving research left the agency, leaving smaller teams to manage increasingly complex national studies.

Former officials say the reductions severely weakened the government’s ability to continue expanding research programs.

“At some point, it becomes unwieldy for a handful of people to be managing all of the research work going on,” a former agency researcher said.

The slowdown extends beyond staffing shortages.

A large infrastructure package passed in 2021 had allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to modernize America’s crash-data systems. However, reports later showed that a significant portion of the funding remained unused because of administrative delays and unfinished agreements.

Some grant recipients reportedly struggled to receive responses from transportation officials while trying to access the funds.

Now, with future transportation legislation still uncertain in Congress, researchers fear that drugged-driving programs could lose even more support.

For many experts, the concern is not simply about budgets or staffing numbers. It is about the possibility that America’s road safety systems are failing to keep up with rapidly changing drug laws and drug-use patterns.

Drugged driving often receives far less public attention than drunk driving. There is no universally accepted roadside standard for cannabis impairment and no nationwide testing system capable of consistently measuring how drugs contribute to fatal crashes.

Yet researchers increasingly believe drugs — often combined with alcohol — may play a role in far more deadly accidents than official statistics currently show.

In many rural communities, hospitals and trauma centers simply lack the staff, equipment, or research infrastructure needed to conduct around-the-clock toxicology testing. As a result, many crashes disappear into incomplete databases, leaving investigators with only part of the story.

And while policymakers continue debating funding priorities and federal agencies struggle with shrinking research teams, families affected by these crashes continue paying the price.

America’s roads are changing. Drug laws are changing. Substance use patterns are changing.

But the country’s ability to track impaired driving may be falling behind at exactly the wrong time.