Driving in Poland

BigEejit

http://www.wimp.com/drivingpoland/

Better or worse that Ireland?

Anan1

Re the first clip, I can never understand people who sit on the horn while letting the other car drive out in front of them. Either cut them off or let them go with good grace.

Boom_Bap

I drove accross Poland last Summer. The beeeeeep-bump-smash noise is a common sound that I heard plenty of times.

One of the most insane things I witnessed was a bus overtaking me, while a car was overtaking me and the bus on the single lane motorways.
The car doing the over-over-taking was doing so on the hard shoulder of the opposite side of the road.
As soon as there is an opertunity to overtake, that's when things get a bit mental. So if you have an open road ahead on your side and traffic approaching on the opposite, that is when you really have to become uber alert as cars see this as thier last chance to over-take.
There are also alot of tailgaters. But, this is from my experience, I might have just had a bad experience.

There were also alot of sensible and courteous drivers, like the one who stopped to tell me my lights were off during the day, and people driving larger vehicles pulling over to allow traffic to pass to ease congestion.

CiniO

Anan1 wrote: »

Re the first clip, I can never understand people who sit on the horn while letting the other car drive out in front of them. Either cut them off or let them go with good grace.

This horn means: "You fecking idiot why did you cut in front of me".
And then when other driver reacts with middle finger, there is another horn saying "f*ck U 2"

Love that kind of drivers

CiniO

Interesting thing to notice about this clip, is that most of those situations happened to one driver.
It's all the time the same car with the same driver, except from AFAIR last 3 clips.

That amount of close-ones never happened in my whole life. He must have collected it only since he got a dashcam, so probably over a year or something. Just incredible.
Or he is very unlucky, or he is doing something wrong.

CiniO

Boom_Bap wrote: »

I drove accross Poland last Summer. The beeeeeep-bump-smash noise is a common sound that I heard plenty of times.

I drove through Poland for 8 years, and I can't really say it's more common than in Ireland.

One of the most insane things I witnessed was a bus overtaking me, while a car was overtaking me and the bus on the single lane motorways.
The car doing the over-over-taking was doing so on the hard shoulder of the opposite side of the road.

Pure mad. But common enough over there.

There are also alot of tailgaters. But, this is from my experience, I might have just had a bad experience.

If I had to chose the worst thing about driving in Poland, that would be it.
Tailgating is so common, that people don't even realise anymore it's tailgating. :mad:

There were also alot of sensible and courteous drivers, like the one who stopped to tell me my lights were off during the day, and people driving larger vehicles pulling over to allow traffic to pass to ease congestion.

You must have your dipped lights (or DRLs) on during the day.
Larger vehicles pulling over to allow traffic to pass are pretty much common everywhere, including Ireland.
Maybe just except from UK, where it's illegal.

BigEejit

Driving an invisible van possibly? :pac:

maceocc2

I've done a lot of driving in Poland over the years, personally I feel they are a lot worse in terms of taking risks. I seen far more road accidents in Poland then I have Ireland.

Blazer

Poland is really like that...been there a few times and every day I was seeing crashes there...you should see them in the snow...nuts :eek:

mad muffin

BigEejit wrote: »

http://www.wimp.com/drivingpoland/

Better or worse that Ireland?

Looks about the same to me. :pac:

Owen

Driven all over Poland, Warsawa, Zakopane, Gdasnk, Lodz, Krakow, Katowice - drivers there I think are better than here. In winter, many got out of their cars to remind me to have my DRLs on in a pleasant way, no one here'd bother their hole. Motorway discipline was good, even in the cities it's all organised around cars unlike here where the Car is the enemy #1 in any urban area.

Our man in Havana

Poland. Chicken champions since time began.

CiniO

Blazer wrote: »

Poland is really like that...been there a few times and every day I was seeing crashes there...you should see them in the snow...nuts :eek:

It's actually strange with those crashes, as I lived there for 25 years, and I only saw crashed from time to time - same like in Ireland.

What was wrong with driving in snow?

Now at place where I work, there is about 100 people working, and every year at least 20 of them have a crash.
That's in West of Ireland, and most of those crashes are single vehicle collisions. (skid and landing in the ditch, rock, etc). In Poland within my friends there was way less people who had any crash, and usually if someone did, it was typical city fender-bender.
However it's probably not measureful to compare, as I live here in the country side, while in Poland I used to live in the city.

Solair

Road fatalities per billion vehicle KM driven:

Poland : 23.5

Ireland 4.9

France 7.7

UK 5.7

Sweden 5.1

USA 8.5

Canada 8.2

Spain 11.7

Iceland 3.9

Greece 17.4

Australia 6

Overall, Ireland's now one of the safest places you can drive in terms of fatalities.

The accident ratio per billion KM is a better measure as it overrides differences in car ownership levels.

In general, Eastern European countries fare quite badly in terms of car fatalities for a whole variety of reasons. Mostly, for the same reasons that our rates were high 20 years ago i.e. relatively poor roads for the traffic volumes, lack of driver education about risks/risky behaviour and relatively weak enforcement.

The main reason Ireland's rates are now low is that *much* more of our driving occurs on motorway / good quality roads than was the case even 5 years ago. There have been massive improvements in road engineering, and in driver behaviour.

Most of our head-on deadly collisions were caused by overtaking on major interurban routes in the past. There was far too much traffic on single carriage way long distance routes.

Nowadays, our motorway network's probably larger than most countries our size.

CiniO

Solair wrote: »

Road fatalities per billion vehicle KM driven:

Poland : 23.5

Ireland 4.9

France 7.7

UK 5.7

Sweden 5.1

USA 8.5

Canada 8.2

Spain 11.7

Iceland 3.9

Greece 17.4

Australia 6

Overall, Ireland's now one of the safest places you can drive in terms of fatalities.

The accident ratio per billion KM is a better measure as it overrides differences in car ownership levels.

In general, Eastern European countries fare quite badly in terms of car fatalities for a whole variety of reasons. Mostly, for the same reasons that our rates were high 20 years ago i.e. relatively poor roads for the traffic volumes, lack of driver education about risks/risky behaviour and relatively weak enforcement.

The main reason Ireland's rates are now low is that *much* more of our driving occurs on motorway / good quality roads than was the case even 5 years ago. There have been massive improvements in road engineering, and in driver behaviour.

Most of our head-on deadly collisions were caused by overtaking on major interurban routes in the past. There was far too much traffic on single carriage way long distance routes.

Nowadays, our motorway network's probably larger than most countries our size.

That's actually very interesting figures.
Would you point out any source?

Also I'm wondering how would they measure the amount km driven?

Solair

OECD http://www.oecd.org/document/53/0,2340,en_2649_34351_2002165_1_1_1_1,00.html

& nicely gathered from multiple sources on the Wikipedia :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

Article on Irish trends:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0107/1224309928432.html

Solair

Solair wrote: »

OECD http://www.oecd.org/document/53/0,2340,en_2649_34351_2002165_1_1_1_1,00.html

& nicely gathered from multiple sources on the Wikipedia :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

Article on Irish trends:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0107/1224309928432.html

Really good data on how safe our roads are, thanks!

Solair

Yeah, the overall picture for Irish road safety is now pretty excellent.

The only problems are in the less populated areas, particularly the Northwest which is way over represented in crash statistics.

In fact, if we could tackle Donegal / Sligo / Leitrim and parts of the West of Ireland we'd probably be the safest place to drive on the planet!

It's always a combination of engineering solutions and driver education though. In Ireland, however, I think the engineering was most definitely a huge contribution. Our inter-urban roads were totally inadequate until very recently. Now, for a country this size, we probably have one of the most extensive motorway networks in the world.

If you compare us to say NZ etc there's a LOT of motorway here.

1,017 km of motorway in Ireland, which is a similar amount to Denmark.

Vs 199 km of motorway in NZ http://www.nzta.govt.nz/network/operating/faqs.html#motorway

Poland's now got about the same number of km of motorway as Ireland, but it's a vastly bigger country. So, it still has a LOT of building to do, but it will get there eventually! We thought we never would either

CiniO

I gave it a bit thinking, and to be honest those measure which compare people killed per billion km driven, doesn't really reflect the road safety.

Greatest reason for this is that the worse the economy is, the less people drive. But they still have to commute and travel, so there is just more pedestrians and cyclists.
More people share cars, so there is usually more in the vehicle. More people travel by bus. But amount of km driven is lower.

The best comparing measure is number of people killed per population in the country.
That just reflect pure probability, of leaving home for work, shopping, holidays, etc and being killed in a road accident on the way, no matter if you drive, walk, cycle, go by bus, etc.

I did a small bit research and found what follows for the year 2010.

Ireland:
Total people killed on Irish roads: 212
Pedestrians: 44
Cyclists: 5
Drivers: 91
Passengers: 55
Bikers: 17
Population: 4,470,700

Poland:
Total people killed on Polish roads: 3907
Pedestrians: 1236
Cyclists: 280
Drivers: 1125
Passengers: 870
Bikers: 342
Other: 54
Population: 38,187,000


So now little calculations to compare casuallities per 100,000 citizens.

Total killed:
Ireland: 4.74
Poland: 10.23

Pedestrians:
Ireland: 1.00
Poland: 3.23

Cyclists:
Ireland: 0.11
Poland: 0.73

Drivers:
Ireland: 2.03
Poland: 2.95

Passengers:
Ireland: 1.23
Poland: 2.27

Bikers:
Ireland: 0.38
Poland: 0.89


So as you can see, in 2010 there was just over twice more people killed on Polish roads than on Irish roads per 100,000 citizens. However there was 225% more pedestrians killed in Poland than in Ireland. Over 563% more cyclists killed in Poland than in Ireland. And only 50% more drivers killed more in Poland than in Ireland. About 85% passengers killed more in Poland than in Ireland, and 134% more bikers killed in Poland than in Ireland. (all figures are per 100,000 citizens)

In general - yes - Irish roads are way more safe than Polish roads. Shortly speaking over twice as safe. But if you are a driver, difference is not that big for you. Literally speaking while in Ireland dies 2 drivers, in Poland dies 3. There is a huge difference in pedestrians and cyclists killed, but there are two reasons for it. Firstly it's just more of pedestrians and cyclists there, especially on country roads. And secondly they don't care about their safety (walking drunk, in dark clothes during the night, with no reflective clothing, no lights - the same with cyclists). Note that almost 40% of people killed on Polish roads are cyclists and pedestrians, while in Ireland is only 23%.
As well Poland lacks a network of motorways, which Ireland already has at this point.
Ireland only handles local traffic, while Poland is transit country between EU and East, which causes lots of HGV traffic on main routes.
In Ireland most cars are newer than 10 years, while in Poland most are older, so their safety is worse (no airbags, no abs,esp) and often they are small cars which are also more dangerous.

Considering all above, I don't think Polish drivers deserve a opinion of deadly dangerous and mad.
Road safety is obviously worse there, but diffenece is not that big as some people might thing.
Wherever I drive, no matter if it's Poland or Ireland, I feel equally safe.

PS - all above figures were takes from RSA and KRBRD (which is Polish equivalent to RSA).

Solair

I think Poland will see the number of road casualties fall very rapidly as the infrastructure improves, which it will over the next 10+ years.

There has to be a road safety culture across everything before you really see a big change. I witnessed this in Ireland and I have also witnessed it Spain, where there was a dramatic improvement in car accident statistics in recent years.

I was reading a report that covered France from 1972 to modern times and I think most countries in Europe have gone along a similar path of rapid improvement in road safety. It is just a question of economics as it takes huge spending on infrastructure to achieve serious results.

I think once the infrastructure is in place, then other agencies (police etc) and the general public suddenly start taking road safety much more seriously and a safety culture develops. Roads look better and everything looks and seems more professional and 'high tech' and I think perhaps people start to take them more seriously and follow the rules of the road more carefully.

It is true that there are still far too many road crashes, but whereas close to 17,000 people were killed on France’s roads in 1972, the 2005 total was in the region of 5000.

http://www.fiafoundation.org/publications/.../road_safety_in_france.pdf


I am quite sure that Poland is going through the same transition and in a decade or so, there will be a major improvement. There's no real reason why it should not be similar to France and Germany in terms of road safety. It simply takes a long time to get there.

knifey_spoonie

As has been said the issue is the willingness to take risks in overtaking. Over the summer i got a nice taste of the varying standards of driving in europe and further a field, i have to say the Ukrainians or russian's win out on the crazy scale. Alot of it is to do with how you are conditioned, it was no big sweat if and artic which probably had no brakes was on your side of the road and 75-100m away, mainly because the last 10 times you were in that situation nothing bad happened. I seen truck hubs catch fire, complete wheels fly off and pass the car out, My personal favourite was being overtaken by a car and then for said car to get a blow out and miss you by a gee hair.

I would say a huge factor in the amount of deaths is the quality and age of the vehicles
.Most cars on irish roads now have ABS and Airbags even cars 10-15 years old. Where in poland your sitting in a 10 year old niva or riva that was designed in the 70's.

galwaytt

Solair wrote: »

The main reason Ireland's rates are now low is that....

...so many people have left the country.....

Chris_Heilong

yeah, Ireland is safe no now bring down those insurance rates.

seawoman

Hello.

Maybe first polish lady opinion here

Irish roads is MUCH more safety, and the driver here is no agressive, more relax, slowly , friendly than in Poland

In my country so many people driver much faster on normal road, whre road is 80-90KM/h there is many drivers who drive 110-120KM, sometimes when i am in home i am so shocking , i feel like everybody REALLY HURRY somewhere. (I dont have that feeling in Ireland). All time one, or more car want overtaking, or tailgating.
I don't like driving in Poland or road, but one things is better , views, so many nice forest roads, there is no raod surrounded by bushes, so you see eveything, i really hate this bushes here. You may stop anywhere and go to forest for a walk (the forest isn't surrounded by fence like here)

Free toilet (outside town )is every petrol station, i don't know why petrol station don't have free toilet for cusomer in Ireland,

Anan1

seawoman wrote: »

but one things is better , views, so many nice forest roads, there is no road surrounded by bushes, so you see eveything, i really hate this bushes here.

We call them 'ditches'.:)

Solair

Anan1 wrote: »

We call them 'ditches'.:)

Eh, a ditch is a drain along the side of the road.
We call the 'bushes' hedges or hedgerows.
They're a big part of the ecosystem here as that's where a lot of the wildlife lobed relatively unscathed by farming.

Ireland's forests mostly sailed off as British naval vessels. They were, sadly, all cut down and turned into ships etc in previous centuries. Much of the West of Ireland is naturally treeless. It's just a feature of having very thin soil layers. There's nothing for large trees to grow in.

The same happened in Spain and also, to an extent, in Britain
Spain and Ireland are now the least forested I countries n the EU.

maceocc2

Owen wrote: »

In winter, many got out of their cars to remind me to have my DRLs on in a pleasant way, no one here'd bother their hole..

The main reason for that is that it's illegal not to have your DRLs on in Poland at any time of the day or any season of the year. In Ireland it's not illegal.

Chris_Heilong

maceocc2 wrote: »

The main reason for that is that it's illegal not to have your DRLs on in Poland at any time of the day or any season of the year. In Ireland it's not illegal.

Sounds a bit daft, why have them on when they are not needed just adding to Battery drain.

CiniO

Chris_Heilong wrote: »

Sounds a bit daft, why have them on when they are not needed just adding to Battery drain.

Because of them, vehicles are better visible.
How this affects general road safety is discussive.

They are mandatory at all times in:
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech republic, Norway.

Also the are obligatory but only outside built up areas in Italy and Hungary, and on some roads in Portugal.

They were mandatory in Austria few years ago, but this was abandoned.

PS - I'm not sure if that data is up to date.

Solair

They're usually obligatory in countries where snowfalls and heavy freezing fog are a regular problem. That's probably why they're not obligatory in Britain and Ireland.

It's almost impossible to see a car coming towards you in falling snow, unless the headlights are on. The same in not true in Irish drizzle.

That being said, there are some people in Ireland who don't light up early enough at dusk or in poor visibility weather.

I had the weird scenario of being told to TURN OFF my dipped headlights by a cop in France! While driving a Volvo which, in the Irish models anyway, automatically puts the lights on!

I explained they did not go off, he told me that I should not be driving this non-compliant car in France then, got a bit grumpy and went on his way without any more.

CiniO

Solair wrote: »

They're usually obligatory in countries where snowfalls and heavy freezing fog are a regular problem. That's probably why they're not obligatory in Britain and Ireland.

I don't think it's the main reason, as in every country it's obligatory to use your dipped headlight during snow fall anyway.

It's almost impossible to see a car coming towards you in falling snow, unless the headlights are on. The same in not true in Irish drizzle.

Sometimes I see cars without any lights coming out of nowhere in rainy foggy days in Ireland

That being said, there are some people in Ireland who don't light up early enough at dusk or in poor visibility weather.

I had the weird scenario of being told to TURN OFF my dipped headlights by a cop in France! While driving a Volvo which, in the Irish models anyway, automatically puts the lights on!

I explained they did not go off, he told me that I should not be driving this non-compliant car in France then, got a bit grumpy and went on his way without any more.

That's actually really weird, as plenty of drivers in France use their dipped headlights anyway during the day.

Just to clarify it.
DRL's were mandatory in Poland for nearly 15 years now, but it was only from October to end of February. 5 years ago it was extended to all year round.
You can use factory fitter DRLs, you can use aftermarket DRLs, or you can just use your normal dipped headlights, and that's the option which vast majority of people use.
Anyway - DRL only apply during day in good weather.
If it becomes dark, it if starts raining, snowing, fog, etc, you need to turn on your normal dipped headlights, the same as you must have done before DRL's were obligatory.

So generally speaking DRL idea has nothing to do with increasing visibility during bad weather, but to increase vehicles visibility during good weather at daytime.

but43r

Chris_Heilong wrote: »

Sounds a bit daft, why have them on when they are not needed just adding to Battery drain.

It doesn't matter what the weather - a car with lights on will ALWAYS be better visible than car with lights off. And I mean ANY WEATHER (Rain, hail, snow or the brightest sunniest day ever).

Your battery gets recharged as you're driving so your argument is invalid. And it adds very little to the fuel consumption - you would save more by having a lighter foot.

Anyway, I'm all for a law that would say that lights should be on at any time of the day and in any weather.

Jimdagym

@ CiniO
Fair play for the work gone into those figures.
However, there is another way to look at them. You showed us the much higher rates of cyclist and pedestrian death on the road, and how the driver deaths were only 50% higher. You listed reasons for the cyclists (much higher numbers) and pedestrians (walking drunk, dark clothes) and other factors (rural population, lack of motorways).
This is all valid, and no doubt contributory, but it seems to be taking all the blame off the driver who hits them. Posters here have said tailgating is rife and everyone is in a bigger hurry to get sonewhere in Poland. All this to me points a much bigger finger towards the drivers than you give credit for.

I have never driven in Poland by the way. Just looking at the figures. And I work with a lot of poles and they are nearly all lunatics on the road! (like here, it's more the fella's than the girls).