The number of road deaths in Poland – which is among the highest in the European Union but has been in decline over the past decade – has continued to fall this year.
Police registered 19,110 accidents and 1,864 deaths on Polish roads from the start of 2021 until the end of October. The latter figure was 9% lower than in the first ten months of 2020, when 2,046 deaths were recorded (and 20,171 accidents).
In 2019, the figures stood at 25,298 accidents and 2,435 deaths. While the pandemic and associated restrictions are likely to have contributed to the declines in 2020 and 2021, they follow a longer-term drop in road accidents and deaths.
In 2011, the total number of accidents for the whole year stood at 40,065. That fell to 23,540 in 2020. The number of deaths decreased over that period by almost the same proportion (just over 40%), from 4,189 in 2011 to 2,491 in 2020.
Figures show data for full years. Source: Polish Police Statistics
Despite the improvements, Polish roads remain among the most dangerous in the EU. Poland recorded the third-largest number of road fatalities in relation to population (77 per million inhabitants) among all member states in 2019, according to data published by Eurostat in June this year.
Only Romania (96 per million inhabitants) and Bulgaria (90) had higher figures than Poland, while at the other end of the scale Sweden (22), Ireland (29) and Malta (32) had the safest roads.
Source: Eurostat
Across the bloc as a whole, the number of people killed in road traffic accidents fell by 2.5% in 2019, the latest year on record, compared to 2018, continuing a downward trend. Fatalities stood at almost 33,000 in 2009 and fell by a third to 22,756 in 2019.
Of these deaths, 44% were car passengers, 20% pedestrians, 16% motorcyclists, 9% cyclists and 11% in other categories, such as buses and mopeds.
In 2019, Poland’s government began toughening the country’s traffic laws in an effort to tackle what it admitted were one of Europe’s worst road safety records.
That process continued this year, when the government approved further changes to road laws that would mean large increases to the maximum fines for various offences. They would also toughen punishments for drink driving.
According to Robert Opas from the Police Road Traffic Office, safety on Polish roads is systematically improving. He told RMF FM that road safety depended on the “prudence, awareness, knowledge, compliance with traffic regulations and respect for others” of road users.
Main image credit: Arkadiusz Sikorski/Flickr (under CC BY-ND 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
