Deadly Roads - "Are polish roads really THAT dangerous?"

sadly so very true.....Poland is a VERY bad place for driving~

Careful...you can't say honest things like this here it is racist!!

I am sure someone will be right along to tell you to go home or call you 'creep' or something else equally frightening.

True.

Sorry - Polish drivers are appalling in their lack of courtesy and spatial awareness- not just my opinion either. Ask ANY British visitors and they will risk losing a new friend to tell you the honest truth.

People enjoy the buzz of inappropiate reckless speed for the conditions - it really is THAT simple. Not an opinion but a fact.

Sorry to have hurt your pride.


OK before a certain beddy byes time I believe - a fool law which I ignore - I give them the horn where and when appropriate - which in Silesia is often as you can imagine.

In our housing estate the ambulance blasts it's siren at 3 in the morning - although the streets are empty.

One, two, three, four.......ten.

If you want to experience the roads of Poland from where you live, I assume you are an American. Go for a drive in the country. That is how most of the roads are besides some highways they have here. These highways are quite nice however they are always under construction. If you want to travel from city to city you basicly have to do just that on narrow and unkept roads. Yeah to answer your question the roads are bad but the reason you see that so many are killed is because 90% of the people driving, drive like complete retards! They have no concern for speed limits posted and when traffic is at it's peak hour you will find most of your smaller accidents happen at that time because impatient idiots run red lights at an alarming rate! I have been driving in Wroclaw Poland for almost 3 years and I must say that when I drive I am careful and safe unlike the rest of my fellow drivers. So to answer your question yes the roads are bad here cobblestone and all but the drivers are much worse!

So have I and I drive aggresively to get to where i need to be, you have to. Ive recently returned from a European tour and I was pleasantly surprised to be able to drive like a normal person again. I was astonished that i had become a Polish driver and had to return to having respect for traffic lights, pedestrians and other motorists. The Poles dont realise that obeying the rules of the road will make driving so much quiker, safer and generally less stressfull. Unfortunately Poles dont think like this and it is blatantly obvious to all who have lived in better coutries.

The look after no:1 mentality witnessed on the roads is unfortunatley evident in most walks of everyday life in Poland. They say its changing but i cant see it, where the fcuking decency?

I just want to say one more thing. By the time you are done reading this, someone will have died in an automobile accident in America. Maybe 2 please read more statistics about different countries. It's amazing how bad a lot of drivers all over the world are!

Rhetoric nonsense

how many people did you scare to death today on a road WB? ;)

Well I only popped down the shop around 10 kmh round trip, i drove extremely responsibly and stopped at three zebra crossings to let locals cross, they didnt say thankyou though. They never do. They just stare at me like im a piece off shite, ignorant so and so's.

yeah.... they should be thankfull you didn't behave like in a bowling alley... ;) but maybe you'll recive 'thank you' cards in your mail...

yes true, they never do and the people behind you beep because you have stopped them...

They're not used to drivers stopping at crossings. Maybe they thought you were going to jump out of the car and mug them?

Only jokin to anyone out there with hyper-sensitivity

If i had a killer metality I would get started in the Post office and work my way down from there......

This took me some time to get used to....It seems that in Poland people just do not stop for people on crossings like we do in the UK . so when you do it they are somewhat suprised , and think you are maybe going to run over them when they cross....Now i just slow down when i see them , but don,t stop , it just confuses them....

stopping at a zebra crossing is a no no,,, the car behind you will overtake you almost every time,,,

i dont actually think polish drivers are that bad yes they will not let you out of a junction unless you force your way out, yes you can be overtaking a car whilst somebody overtakes the car coming the other way but the roads (in the north) are much wider than most places,,

i wrote else where

1/2 polish drivers are suicidal other 1/2 or homocidal

remember that and no problem

i have driven in china it is 1000 times worse than poland, singapore oh my god , any asian country in fact especially if they believe in reincarnation,,,

1 last point poland drink allowances is a hell of a lot less than uk ,, unless i am mistaken 1 drink would probably put you over the limit.

The car behind u will overtake u, LOL. True that. Some fecker got on my goat today for just whizzing through a crossing. It was my frickin right of way (as a pedestrian) but what did that matter to Mr Bigcar Bellend? I swore at him in Spanish, puto is such a nice word.

I would agree that this. We don't drive here yet but my husband's Harley is on it's way and I'm afraid for him. He is a very safe, defensive driver, but the drivers in Warsaw are usually so fixed on their own goal of where they are trying to get that they are not considerate of other drivers or pedestrians. I've almost been hit a few times because the come flying around a corner (even in Old Town) and don't even slow down. They see me in the middle of the street and they expect me to run out of the way...... Unless maybe they can tell I'm American!!! JK Polish people have been incredibly nice, helpful, forgiving of our ignorances!!!! I am actually polish descent but this is my first time here! I am eager to find my family members still in small towns.... which means we will be on the roads!!!!

Good to have another Harley rider here...Welcome...I am a Brit who has survived five years of riding my Harley around Poland...I live out in the country , but i have made trips as far as Ukraine on it...I have not had a problem with the Polish drivers ( so far ) its the condition of the roads in some of the cities that have given me some near misses...Mind you the Polish roads are wonderfull compared to those in Ukraine and Belarus , they are deadly...

Let's move onto another dimension, that of tailgating. Does it happen that often in Poland? I've seen it a little but I don't think it's any more prevalent here than elsewhere. It's so rude just to sit on sb's tail, rather than just bide ur time (at a safe distance) and overtake. Harassing older drivers is just not right

Happened to me often in England, on my way to and from London. Practically never in Scotland. English drivers are not so holier-than-thou at all. Scots are much more polite, although some of my colleagues are reckless (one had even a year's suspension of his driver's licence).

The Scots are no saints in that regard. The young boy racers are the worst.

Yeah, but I'm talking here about day-to-day driving.
I'm not going to stubbornly defend Polish drivers here, but I think that drivers from my place of origin (Opolszczyzna) aren't that bad. Though they still have problems with speed limits (esp. in rural areas, remember grannies of chaos !) and pedestrians. Street lights are generally well respected (no worse than here in Scotland IMN-S-HO).

Day-to-day driving is hampered here by dangerously positioned crossings. I really believe that. U start crossing and suddenly a car appears at speed. I don't blame the drivers, I blame the conditions if anything.

I've been reading the thread and i totally agree. The roads aren't great but it's the drivers who are the problem. When we were driving back from Warsaw in the rush hour there was so much traffic the cars hardly moved on both lanes, someone tried to join one of the lanes but the men in the cars standing there (taxi drivers they were) kept shouting spierdalaj dziadu at that poor bloke. What difference does it make if you let one car in in front of you, i'm not a driver but i find this crazy. It's like they own the road they're on, once they're on it you cannot squeeze in front of them to join the traffic, or God forbids you overtake them cos they will follow you and drive right on your ass untill you nicely give them room to overtake you, and then they will slow down again. There are so many drivers like that in Poland it's just scary. Or waiting at the pedestrian crossing, no way the cars will stop when they see people waiting, you have to wait till there are no cars going from either sides, THEN you can cross. There are those 'black marks' on some roads that tell you how many people got killed there, but instead of those places becoming safer the number on the sign seems to get higher everytime we go that way. Oh and there is this speed meter somewhere on the way to Warsaw, it's not a speed camera but it told you how fast you were going and if you were going too fast it said slow down. But the drivers would make up this game to go as fast as you possibly can, i mean you could see people cheering in the cars if the screen displayed a big red slow down! And as for drink driving... It happens a lot, i think it's still quite a big problem over there, quite a few of my relatives and family friends got killed due to drink driving. Why do people in Poland treat driving like some sort of a competition where you must go as fast as you can, don't show any respect for other road users and there is nothing that can stop you to get into the car, be it you had too much to drink or you have 6 people trying to get into a maluszek...

As I tacitly implied b4, it's the stop/start nature of driving that frustrates people. They have to brake and wait, then go, again and again.

I was in Poland in October, and was quite pleased to see a new interstate highway connecting Gdańsk to the Torun area. It was a toll road, and it was the first week that it had been open. It saved us a lot of time. And most importantly....

My last trip to Poland in 2000, the road was single-lane from Gdańsk to Warsaw much of the way, and passing was a bit scary.

This new road is beautiful and safe.

Knowing how money cautious Poles are I am surprised at the amount of fuel and brake pad they waste whilst driving. They seem to accelerate needlessly and brake at the last minute often.

The amount of times im casually driving along and some lunatic approaches a from a side road and I think hes not gonna stop and then wham he slams on the brakes, weird.

Perhaps its the shock mentality.

What do you expect?
Driving on the roads here is like riding a rollercoaster at a themepark...
Humps, holes, bad surface...
Sometimes I even feel like I ran over a camel while driving!
I wonder what PL does with the european funds for road infrastructure...