Apparently people will soon be able to register RHD cars in Poland. I dread to think what effect that will have on road safety here.
Poland has some of the worst roads and most dire traffic death statistics in the European Union - which is why a recent decision pressing Polish authorities to allow for the registration of right-hand-drive cars is causing consternation.
According to the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, Niilo Jaaskinen, advocate general of the European Court of Justice, said that Poland has been too restrictive in refusing to register cars from the UK and Ireland to drive on Polish roads. The European Commission filed a complaint against Poland over the issue in 2011.
The result may be a flood of UK and Irish cars into Poland (...)
Full article here: blogs.ft/beyond-brics/2013/11/08/poland-driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road/#axzz2kXKttbwr (requires registration).
A couple of interesting facts from the rest of the article:
- in 2012 646,000 used cars were imported to Poland;
- the average Polish car is slightly more than 16 years old;
- 3,520 people were killed on Polish roads in 2012;
- Poland saw 93 road fatalities per million people, which makes it the third worst place in the EU for population-adjusted road deaths.
Given the way that some Poles drive, I fear that hundreds of thousands of RHD cars on Polish roads could well see Poland dropping to the very bottom of the EU league table when it comes to road deaths.