For those driving to Poland for Euro2012.

CiniO

I found interesting video showing usual drivers behaviour on Polish roads.
Maybe it's not like that at all times, but unfortunately it happends quite often.
I'm not sure but it looks like that video was recorded by some Polish emigrants living in UK or Ireland (RHD car). Thay are laughing of what's happening, but also they seem to be bit shocked.

Anyone who is driving to Poland bear in mind that that's what the driving in there might look like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvNVjMRjxbg

Kintarō Hattori

Been there 15 times at this stage and yep some of your countrymen are a little mad CiniO. Give them a long stretch of road and ...... :eek:

Mycroft H

Is poland the european version of Indian driving ?

bop1977

BX 19 wrote: »

Is poland the european version of Indian driving ?

No the polish are more suicidal on the roads.

Mar4ix

id say they driving uk car, you can see single disc on left bottom corner.

Nothing extreme , id say, ... regular European driving stile.

knifey_spoonie

My rules for driving in eastern europe.

1 Be brave, if you drive in a sedate manner you will get nowhere. Don't be afraid to use all of your side of the road.

2 Make your car as big as possible. If there is a gap they will go for it, even if they wont fit.

3 Use your mirrors, danger comes from all directions.

4 The hard shoulder is a legitimate driving lane, especially while you are being overtaken while the car over taking you is also being over taken, and there is a trucking coming the other way.

5 Have fun and relax, its the near death experiences that make it fun.

Mar4ix

knifey_spoonie wrote: »

My rules for driving in eastern europe.

1 Be brave, if you drive in a sedate manner you will get nowhere. Don't be afraid to use all of your side of the road.

2 Make your car as big as possible. If there is a gap they will go for it, even if they wont fit.

3 Use your mirrors, danger comes from all directions.

4 The hard shoulder is a legitimate driving lane, especially while you are being overtaken while the car over taking you is also being over taken, and there is a trucking coming the other way.

5 Have fun and relax, its the near death experiences that make it fun.

Thats right, also have to drive big jeep,....... as bigger car, more right you are ... indicators doesn't work there .... if you want change a line, indicators wont help, need turn hard, that near by car hit the brakes to avoid collision , and youll get your line. ... from my own experience.... at least in Riga.

Marcin_diy

I was driving rhd car in Poland - usually I had no passenger on the left side, so it wasn't very comfortable with overtaking trucks and buses.
It is nice to have a powerfull car, as most overtaking I did started from a long distance from behind of a car I was overtaking ( to make sure i can go on the other side of the road without hitting car going other direction.


One tip from me is - If you drive your side of road, and see that cars in front of you are moving to the right - do the same, if you see car going opposite direction overtaking something - also go to the right, as most drivers in Poland will expect, that if you have place to move to the right side you will do this.

keithclancy

knifey_spoonie wrote: »

My rules for driving in eastern europe.

1 Be brave, if you drive in a sedate manner you will get nowhere. Don't be afraid to use all of your side of the road.

2 Make your car as big as possible. If there is a gap they will go for it, even if they wont fit.

3 Use your mirrors, danger comes from all directions.

4 The hard shoulder is a legitimate driving lane, especially while you are being overtaken while the car over taking you is also being over taken, and there is a trucking coming the other way.

5 Have fun and relax, its the near death experiences that make it fun.

1. Just drive and be courteous to others.

2. Stupid

3. Thats a given

4. Hard shoulders are an Irish thing, in the Netherlands we call them a Spitstrook and not on N Roads.

5. Never happened to me but hey

Also if you drive from the Netherlands to Berlin make sure you play this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Y1sEmyymw

TBH .. Poland isn't all that bad ..

Curacao .... Indonesia ... now their mad.

knifey_spoonie

Just my experience's, i changed my driving habits as to how i felt safe. Sometimes if you drive more aggressively it doesn't give people an option to do something stupid.

Im sure by hard shoulder the OP will know i mean the bit of the road to the right of the driving lane

My advice only comes from my experience of driving about 11,000km over about a month last summer. Which included a good chunk of the trans-siberian highway.

duckysauce

knifey_spoonie wrote: »

if you drive more aggressively it doesn't give people an option to do something stupid.

says it all, doesn't matter how much you have driven , i would not like to meet you on the road :rolleyes:

CiniO

knifey_spoonie wrote: »

Im sure by hard shoulder the OP will know i mean the bit of the road to the right of the driving lane

Yes, that's hard shoulder.
Legally drivers are not allowed to use it for driving.
It's for pedestrians, horse riders(sic), bicycles, mopeds, hand trolleys, and other similar vehicles.

However it's been a well known driving practice to move to hard shoulder to allow other drivers to overtake. Even though illegal, it is and always was wide spread. Usually not penalised by police.

Unfortunately there is some drivers, that either force other cars in front of them to move to hard shoulder by flashing, or force oncoming drivers to move to hard shoulder by overtaking while someone else is coming ahead. That's very bad driving practice, penalized by police if caught. It's not that much common, but happens and above video is perfect example of it.

PS - I must say that it also happened few times in Ireland that I was forced to move to hard-shoulder by oncoming overtaking driver.
Also the most severe braking caused by oncoming overtaking driver in front of blind bend on a road without hardshoulders happened to me recently in Ireland as well, even though I traveled over 200,000 km in Poland.

I put the video to show what anyone can expect while driving in Poland. It's not like some of you might think that it's all the time like on this video. Video shows dangerous moments.
If I tried hard I could probably gather together few examples of bad driving in Ireland as well, which watched by foreigners could cause them to think that Ireland is one of the most dangerous places to drive in the world.

bop1977

The last case of terrible driving on Irish roads I have come across was by a polish driver with a death wish. He is a lad I work with. He was driving over the speed limit and worst of all he overtook 2 on coming cars on a solid white line one of which was over the crest of a hill. When I confronted him he said this is how we drive in Poland.

Seweryn

CiniO wrote: »

I found interesting video showing usual drivers behaviour on Polish roads.

Anyone who is driving to Poland bear in mind that that's what the driving in there might look like.

Feck all that, it is still one beautiful country .

And I do not find Ireland to be much better, when it comes to dangerous driving.