Such are the conclusions of a report published yesterday by the European Transport Safety Council. There were a total of 5,437 fatal casualties in road accidents in Poland last year, or 143 per 1,000,000 population. This compares with 148 per 1,000,000 in Lithuania, 99 in Hungary, and 104 in the Czech Republic. Poland ranks behind Romania (142) and Bulgaria (139) where the quality of roads is poor as well.
In the early 2000s, the EU set itself the task of halving the number of fatal road accidents by 2010. In Poland, however, there has hardly been any improvement - in 2001, the number of fatal accident victims reached 145. Others have had more success. Back in 2001, France's statistics were similar to Poland's (134 fatal casualties). Today, the figure has dropped below the EU average (69) - chiefly by dint of draconian regulations. In 2007, the French police gave a total of 27 million tickets (nearly 7 million those attributable to radars) for a total amount of 883 million. A single ticket can run as high as 6,800.
In Latvia, the number of fatalities fell by 43 percent, also by dint of tighter police scrutiny and penalties. Driving with a blood alcohol count of 0.1 percent costs 15 days in jail, for instance.
As many as 39,000 people were killed in road accidents in the EU in 2008. This is like burying the entire population of a mid-sized town. Is Poland's poor record attributable solely to its poor-quality roads and old cars?
'The road itself is not guilty. It's the drivers who have to adapt themselves to the road conditions,' says Maria Dąbrowska-Loranc at the Centre for Road Traffic Safety (CBRD). 'The most frequent cause of accidents is excessive speed.'
The report's authors argue that the promotion of safe cars is a matter of fundamental significance. They estimate that some 10,600 people survived over the last decade because they had accidents in safely built cars. In Poland, as many as two in three cars are more than ten years old - a ratio twice as high as the EU average. According to the Chief Police Headquarters, 31 percent of accidents are caused by excessive speed, 24 percent by failure to give way, 7 percent by improper overtaking. As many as 30 percent of all accidents are caused by fleet car drivers, even though such vehicles account for less than 5 percent of all cars registered in Poland, estimates the Partnership for Road Safety, a non-governmental organisation.
Ms Dąbrowska-Loranc says the situation will improve as soon as a new photo radar law enters in force: 'In France, in the very first year when such a law had been in force, the number of accidents fell by 20 percent. In Poland, this would translate into 1,000 saved lives. But President Kaczyński has sent the act to the Constitutional Tribunal on the grounds that it provides for immediate enforceability, but does not specify clearly enough the appeal procedure. The president also found too severe the provision allowing the police to auction the car of a driver who has failed to pay a ticket.
Mikołaj Karpiński, spokesperson for the
Ministry of Infrastructure, is optimistic: '
The National Traffic Safety Programme provides for reducing the number of fatalities by half. Though only by 2013, three years later than the EU programme provided for.'
'According to preliminary figures, between January and May there were 450 fatalities less than in the same period last year,' says Mr Karpiński.
Translated by Marcin Wawrzyńczak
