GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Two state transportation employees have been changing an indication on the shoulder of U.S. Freeway 6 in western Colorado one morning when a Jeep Grand Cherokee swerved off the highway and struck them.
The employees, Nathan Jones and Trent Umberger, died within the September 2024 crash, as did a passenger within the Jeep. Assessments discovered that the driving force, Patrick Sneddon, then 59, had oxycodone and 6 occasions Colorado’s presumed impairment threshold for THC — the psychoactive compound in hashish — in his blood. He pleaded responsible and is serving 30 years in jail on three counts of vehicular murder and different prices.
“Our four children are completely crushed without their Dad,” wrote Kristine Umberger, the spouse of Trent, in a sufferer affect assertion for the native district lawyer. “We have lost our ability to live life like we used to.”
Federal freeway security officers have lengthy tracked the position of alcohol in deadly crashes, however they don’t monitor deaths that contain a driver beneath the affect of medication or a mix of medication and alcohol.
That discrepancy is partly because of the challenges of proving impairment, since some medicine stay detectable for weeks after use. Sneddon’s lawyer, Jennifer Gregory, stated a driver could be presumed impaired beneath Colorado regulation if their blood comprises 5 nanograms of THC or larger per liter. However that “permissible inference” threshold is completely different from a authorized restrict — such because the 0.08% blood alcohol content material restrict — and the extent set by Colorado isn’t supported by revealed scientific research, Gregory stated.
Such info might show helpful because the nation struggles with an opioid disaster, the Trump administration loosens federal rules on marijuana, and greater than 40 states have legalized or decriminalized some types of hashish and psychedelic medicine.
“Impaired driving is a top public safety issue that extends beyond alcohol,” stated Sean Rushton, a spokesperson for the federal freeway security company, which is tackling the difficulty collaboratively, with sources to make sure a “comprehensive and coordinated approach.”
However President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce since he returned to workplace in 2025, together with dwindling federal investments, imply that efforts to develop and enhance the monitoring of impaired-driving deaths nationwide have slowed.
The hole in information could be vital. In Mesa County, Colorado, the place Jones and Umberger have been killed, the coroner’s workplace tracks varied types of impaired-driving fatalities. From 2017 by 2024, a 3rd of visitors deaths concerned alcohol alone, in line with information from the county coroner’s workplace.
When medicine are factored in, practically half of Mesa County’s visitors deaths over the identical interval concerned a driver intoxicated with alcohol, medicine, or a mix, in line with the coroner’s studies.
“If you want to solve a problem, you need to understand the problem,” Nationwide Transportation Security Board researcher Jana Worth stated. “If you only know that alcohol is present, then it limits your ability to fully understand what might have been impairing a person or a population of people. It trickles into the countermeasures that we use as a society to address the problem.”
Figuring out a Hidden Subject
NTSB researchers reported in 2022 that, throughout 4 geographical samples of roughly 26,000 drivers, about half of these arrested for impaired driving and greater than 1 / 4 of drivers killed in crashes examined optimistic for a couple of substance, equivalent to cocaine, sedatives, and antidepressants. The evaluation additionally discovered that solely 4 states and the District of Columbia drug-tested greater than 60% of fatally injured drivers in 2020.
These findings led the NTSB, an unbiased federal company that investigates main incidents, to make a collection of suggestions to the Nationwide Freeway Transportation Security Administration and states to determine a complete, nationwide dataset on impaired driving.
However hurdles stay to creating such a system. Fatality and harm studies submitted to the NHTSA database typically function lacking or faulty information, in line with a 2022 report.
Various state legal guidelines round testing arrestees and decedents for medicine make getting uniform information tough, in line with Caroline Money, a former worker of NHTSA’s impaired-driving division, as does a scarcity of confirmed metrics like blood alcohol content material to measure drug impairment, not simply the presence of a drug.
“It’s a slow process, which is incredibly difficult when you know that each day that passes is risking a lack of safety for however many people facing the potential of a drug-impaired-driving crash,” Money stated. “But some progress is better than no progress.”
Acknowledging how lengthy these efforts will take, the NTSB additionally advisable that NHTSA construct an interim surveillance system that might use information from trauma facilities to create a nationwide pattern of crash-involved impaired drivers.
The company made some headway, reporting in 2023 that it was conducting its personal examine with the assistance of 11 trauma facilities and health worker places of work. It additionally helped California set up a 19-month statewide surveillance system, which NHTSA will use to judge the feasibility of a nationally consultant system.
Such applications are helpful for public consciousness and for bettering the flexibility of police to grasp drugged driving patterns that may assist them tailor enforcement, stated James Chenoweth, a College of California-Davis affiliate professor who researches toxicology and was concerned within the California program. However some trauma facilities, particularly in rural areas, typically lack the analysis infrastructure essential for round the clock drug testing and participation.
Nonetheless, it’s attainable, and he stated the profit is clear within the findings from California’s surveillance system.
“If you go out there and tell people that 44% of drivers who ended up in the ER from a car accident had at least one potentially impairing substance in their blood at the time of the accident, that gets people’s attention,” Chenoweth stated.
Shrinking Analysis Groups
Since NHTSA’s replace to the NTSB three years in the past, nevertheless, the company has but to observe up on the advice. Workers cuts and departures at NHTSA final 12 months paint a poor outlook for change.
From 2021 to 2024, the company grew from 600 staff to 790. On the finish of Trump’s first 12 months in workplace, NHTSA had dropped to about 550 individuals resulting from government-wide cuts and folks leaving on their very own.
Money, who now works for the nonprofit Governors Freeway Security Affiliation, was certainly one of 5 staff who left NHTSA’s impaired-driving division final 12 months. That leaves simply two workers members within the division, she stated.
Ian O’Dowd, a former worker in NHTSA’s behavioral analysis division, stated he was a part of a workforce of 16 individuals who studied, partly, impaired driving. Solely three or 4 workforce members are nonetheless with the company, he stated.
“At some point, it becomes unwieldy for a handful of people to be managing all of the research work going on,” O’Dowd stated.
NHTSA communications director Sean Rushton stated the company has “both the financial and personnel resources necessary to support its programs with multiple offices carrying out this work collaboratively, ensuring a comprehensive and coordinated approach.”
The 2021 infrastructure regulation, handed beneath the Biden administration, elevated funding for NHTSA’s state freeway security program from about $667 million in 2021 to just about $953 million this 12 months.
The regulation included $750 million to modernize crash-data applications, however as of January over $475 million was unused. The funds expired in September except they have been obligated by a signed settlement.
A report by the U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace discovered that almost 1 / 4 of entities awarded grants in 2022 had not acquired a signed settlement when surveyed between December 2024 and March 2025. It additionally discovered that over 1 in 5 grantees reported that getting well timed replies from Division of Transportation workers was reasonably or very difficult.
With the Biden-era infrastructure regulation expiring later this 12 months, Congress might lengthen the unused crash-data fund or implement a brand new strategy to impaired driving.
In mid-April, Home Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-Mo.) stated proposed laws might acceptable between $500 billion and $550 billion — lower than half of the present invoice’s $1.2 trillion — with a extra “traditional” give attention to roads and bridges.
The invoice has since stalled amid negotiations for extra funding, leaving future assist unsure.
“Certainly, we are always hoping that there will be an increase in the amount of money available to do this work,” Money stated. “Whether or not that will happen this year, I don’t know.”
