Poland's deputy minister Szmit resigns due to fatal road accident statistics...

nytimes.com/aponline/2017/09/29/world/europe/ap-eu-poland-government.html?mcubz=1

Just thought I would share this with you.....for me its no surprise that Poland's road death rate is among the highest in Europe......whenever I drive other drivers seem to drive too fast....too close...and are incredibly impatient to get past you.....it is unbelievable to see such dangerous driving on roads and how arrogant and pushy drivers are to get past you on the fast lane, as to do this they would need to break the law on speeding...which of course they do....

I also think that there are too many drivers on roads who are driving over powered cars which they do not have the experience to drive safely...not sure why but I think it is a case of get the biggest car/4x4 and see how fast it drives..... I also think that drivers are notorious for driving too close to the back of cars, and clearly drivers just don't seem to understand the rules on 'stopping distance' ie. how long in distance and time it would take for someone to stop if the person in front braked for any reason.....

At the end of the day I think it is all down to education and making drivers aware of the 'stopping distance' rules and regulations....

The driving is flat out scary in some parts of Poland. I have a car there I use whenever I come visit (primarily for road trips) but I still prefer to take cabs especially in the city or have my cousin drive. Driving outside of the cities isn't as scary if you're driving slow but the roads can still be bad and you never know when some dog, tractor, or something else is going to pop up driving through the wioski.

Exactly. Which is why, in the UK, where people learn to drive properly, the driving instructor beats it into you "Proceed according to the road conditions."

Ergo - that means NOT driving along country roads at 120 km an hour because said dog, tractor or something else do pop there. To regulation.

It's not rocket science, but people driving on Polish roads have a death wish (and often kill someone else).
Said people should be put behind bars for a long time and served liquid porridge due to their broken teeth.
Also the 24 point penalty system is a sick joke designed to legitimise bribes. I accumulated 12 points one year, by trying really hard to be a dick. That should be a 3 month ban to concentrate the mind.

I also think that another potential cause for accidents which could and probably does result in occasional deaths are the location of zebra crossings.....why are they positioned so close to road junctions? I have seen 4 zebra crossings at crossroads and time after time when cars stop for pedestrians (sometimes suddenly as pedestrians do not always give advance notice of crossing)....the said cars are half on the main road and half in the side road waiting, so any cars coming up behind have to stop suddenly but also other cars from other directions often have to stop because another car is wanting to turn down the same street or another street.....etc...which often blocks the whole junction on busy days and is a recipe for a serious accident if just one driver is not particularly focused. All of the stopping and starting takes place at the main junction where two roads cross each other and would be better if this takes place away from the junction and therefore reduce the number of drivers affected by a pedestrian crossing a particular road.

I think it would be a lot safer and improve traffic control if the zebra crossings were located further away from the main junction. (just a few more metres would do...or at least a car/long vehicle length) Pedestrians would only have to walk a few more metres to use the zebra crossing. This would allow drivers to stop for pedestrians further down the road minimising the potential for accidents and thus allow traffic flow without backing up .....zebra crossings are necessary but they are too close to the actual junction.....

Yes I've noticed that too. It's very odd and what's this business of the green man which is a safe crossing signal for pedestrians also acting as a filter light for cars turning at the junction. It works on the premise that cars can go across when the man is green provided it's safe to do so ie. nobody on the crossing, but cars barely wait an instant unitl the pedestrian has moved a couple of paces before crossing behind them. It also means that pedestrians and motorists approaching the crossing as the man turns green tend to race each other to get across first and pedestrians don't have full and unimpeded access to the crossing because if the pedestrian arrives at the crossing when a car is using it they basically have to wait for the car to cross before theycan by which time the green man may have turned red again.

Years ago I came round a bend doing about 90 and was confronted by a tractor with a few farm boys on the trailer, and two loose dogs. One dog was sensibly running behind, but the other one was on my side of the road. I had three options: steer left and crash into the tractor, steer right into a ditch, or carry on. As an animal lover I hate running dogs over, but that dog was the first of three I've hit in PL. And a couple of cats. And a hare. And very nearly a deer. And very nearly fifteen wild boar at once.


Yes, that's a pain. It also impedes traffic, especially on roundabouts. I guess it's not going to change anytime soon, though.

pan smit at least had dignity to get the f*** out of office. Nice gesture

Still, committing ritual public suicide would be much better.

@Roger5

I had several similar experiences, both driving and being a passenger. My cousin who I hang out with the most is studying to be a vet, is a vegetarian and a huge animal lover. One time we hit a wild dog and he insisted on taking it with us. He nursed it back to health and the dog still lives with him. He's partially blind though and the accident messed up his stomach or digestive tract and he can't really poop on his own. My cousin will literally put on gloves and like pull the poop from out of him... now that's devotion to animals lol.. and that's just one of 8 or so that are at his house. They even have their own area in like the basement where he puts them in at night or when it rains.

One time in the the mid/late 90s' I was driving with my aunt and her husband in a little Fiat Cinquento that were very popular back then. We were driving through super thick fog and super slow. Well, as we were driving the usual route from wroclaw to the suburbs and towns around it, there was a bicyclist who was clearly in the cars' lanes. We hit him but fortunately he just got some scratches and refused any medical help. It could have ended way way worse though.

Idk I don't think I can ever get use to like driving in Poland. There's just way too much going on at once and my nerves and adrenaline run like crazy especially when driving around Wroclaw, Gdansk, etc. It's not so bad in the smaller towns but still you have to constantly like monitor the roads and make sure nothing suddenly pops out - especially around blind corners and turns.

One merely could look at the sides of the roads and count the crosses to realize how unsafe driving in PL is.

A well known TV Presenter has died in a head on collision in Kaszuby.

There's some online speculation that one or more parties may have been using mobile phones while driving. I don't know whether either driver actually was (and hope they weren't) however it's significant that the penalty for using a handheld phone while driving is only a 200zl fine. In the U.K. it's a £200 fine (£1000 in some circumstances), 6 penalty points and loss of driving licence for drivers who passed their test within the last 2 years.

Every day, I see someone driving with a phone in their hand. Poland has one of the highest levels of road fatalities in Europe anyway and among the lowest driving standards in the developed world. The penalty should increase; a fair punishment would be for people who drive while talking on a handheld phone to automatically lose the vehicle they were driving.

wiadomosci.onet.pl/trojmiasto/piotr-swiac-nie-zyje-w-wypadku-samochodowym-zginal-dziennikarz-tvp-gdansk/dlbxhgk

It's not the minister's fault, nor is it entirely the fault of the bad roads. A yellow Renault Megane GT loaded to the brim driving 160 km/h around Krakow does not give any chance of survival in the event of an accident.

Plus, the driver was completely intoxicated. Drunk in 4 dupas, sort of. Madman.