Independence Blood Bath on Polish roads over the long weekend.

90 dead

652 injured

By 1,880 drunk drivers
thenews.pl/national/artykul143447_ninety-die-on-polands-roads-over-long-weekend.html

Does anyone care?

very sad, but that happens during every long weekend in PL...

No, didn't you hear? People won't be harmed by second hand smoke anymore! We're all safe!

Also, dopalacze is now illegal in Poland! Granted that it hasn't been proven that anyone has died from them alone, it still caused a huge outrage and was found to be an epidemic warranting emergency legislation.

What's that you say? Alcohol? Nah, don't worry about it.

It's quite sick really. When I ask Poles about their opinion about this they just shrug and accept it.

Very sad.

The holiday was one day longer this year but the death toll rose by 130%

...but still...except the lovely pgtx... no one seems to care!

Are Poles supposed to be outraged by the number of victims? It's an old statistics repeated after ever single long weekend.

It's not that we don't care - it's rather that we can't do anything about it aside from not drinking and driving ourselves.

Ha, thats the attitude right there!

And what we are supposed to do?

The solution, as it was in all previous countries, was to use shame and embarrassment to get people to conform. Once the general tone of society moves against drink-driving, most people (aside from the uncultured few) get the message and stay off the drink.

Drink-driving killed plenty of people in the West twenty, thirty, forty years ago, when methods to catch drunks were much less sophisticated. But stronger fines, enhanced police presence and fining alcohol sellers (pubs) didn't work. Shame did.

But still, in Poland, when Wujek Andrzej stumbles away from the family party clutching his keys, maybe your grandmother will say "are you sure you can drive ok?" and he'll murmur or roar "I'll be fine! What's half a litre of vodka to a man like me?!" And then drive home, while everyone else around the table twists their napkins in their hands and says "heh, Uncle Wujek, he'll never change, we need his generation to die before Poland modernises."

It's a pathetic story I've seen too many times at too many Polish celebrations.

I agree with you.It starts to be like that in Poland.We still have to change but there's an improvement.


When I was present in situation like that I've clearly said that this person shouldn't drive and then everybody agreed with me.


Did you call the police?

I agree - the solution is a societal change and bigger punishments for DUI.

Well, drunk driving is bad, but if 1880 drivers kill, Ok, harm 742 people, then it's less than half a victim per one driver. What I mean, that sort of propaganda only makes things worse. The main reason for the body count is that during the long weekends there's much more Sunday drivers on the badly maintained roads than usual.

What Poland needs is a slight increase in legal alcohol level, comparable to Germany, and brutal policing of excesses. Then we have the problem of corruption...

Veritas vos liberabit

Even I am bored with crappy excuses.

Did you stop them?


Increasing the legal alcohol level??? Are you mad or just insane? It's quite clear the current levels don't stop enough drivers from drinking!


Which is a huge percentage. So you think its ok to get in a car while drunk and have a 50% chance of killing someone?

The only point here is this....Dont drink and drive. Anyone who gets in a car with even a single drink in them should be banned from driving and put into prison.

Anyway, the "By 1,880 drunk drivers" that you posted is misleading. That just means that they stopped 1,880 people who blew positive for alcohol. Anything over 0.00 in Poland means you're driving under the influence. The article doesn't say that 90 people are dead, and 652 injured due to drunk drivers.

That's the point. Too low legal levels make it all less serious, and the whole thing is rather sneered at in consequence.


What 50% chance? They were the drivers caught by the police, they didn't harm anybody. The huge numbers come from the police being specially mobilised for the Action Long Weekend.

Usual carnage every year. It is a cultural lemming.

Yet it strongly suggests it by association, and this is bad propaganda. Counter-productive, because people can easily see through it.

They are dead, alcohol or not, they can't f8cking drive. period. The facts speak for themselves only the Italians and Greeks are worse at driving and that is hardly a surprise.

Yes,the drunk person didn't drive.


I don't excuse anyone I'm just saying that we are in the middle of the process.

Yes. Or more to the point they should be ashamed.


You know, in the three years that I've been a member on this forum, I've often read Poles defending the indefensible but that just takes it to a new extreme. I've got news for you, the state of the poorly maintaned roads should only slow drivers down.


Really? That is the most rediculous thing I've ever read on this site.

How drink affects your driving


The propaganda and counter production is in your response.


Would you like to argue that alchohol wasn't a factor in the 130% increase in deaths from the previous year? If so, can you back your argument up with some data?

I meet some feckin mad drivers on a daily basis.

In Ireland there used to be quite a lot of DrinkDriving but due to clever and graphic awareness campaigns and heavy penalties (jail time) that trend has been curved to a huge extent, now the younger generation mostly wouldn't dream of driving under the influence.

I have a question, the speed cameras are never turned on, don't they pay for themselves, plus some?
And I don't get why they have to tell people there is a speed camera up ahead that kinda defeats the purpose.
But I think one of the biggest problems are mobilephones, people are distracted while hurtling a ton of metal down the road at 120 Km ph.

I think they should make hands-free units mandatory in car manufacturing plants and free with every new mobile.

gosh! That has a poetic twang...


...can pigs fly?

What? Where did you pull that from? I just noted that you misquoted the article.

It's to stop people emergency breaking and causing more accidents when they see one.

Naughty, naughty...

Just pointing it out. No need to make things up, the problem is already bad enough.

Which one's that

drunk driving deaths.

On the other hand, I've never seen any corpses on the road here and drive my bike just about every day...still alive...

Fact: 90 people died in the carnage on Polish roads over the independence weekend which is a 130% increase on the previous year.

Fact: 1880 people were found to be over the limit (and for sure a lot more got away with it).

With out a doubt there is a link. I'm not the one making things up.