The annual number of fatalities on Poland’s roads fell below 2,000 last year for the first time since records began. Police link the drop in deaths to tougher new road safety measures, including higher fines for speeding.
According to preliminary police figures reported by the Rzeczpospolita daily, last year there were 21,324 road accidents in Poland, a country of 38 million people. That was 6.5% lower than in 2021 and 9% less than in 2020.
The number of fatalities dropped to 1,883 in 2022 – 16% lower than in 2021 and 24% less than in 2020. A decade ago, the number of deaths was almost twice as high as today, standing at 3,571 in 2012.
Last year’s decline followed sigificant increases in fines for speeding and certain other road offences that were introduced at the beginning of 2022. Pedestrians were also given priority over cars at road crossings, bringing Poland in line with most other European countries.
Last year did, however, see a slight increase in the number of accidents involving pedestrians, but fewer of them resulted in deaths than a year earlier. A total of 451 pedestrians lost their lives in road accidents in 2022.
A police officer can now impose a maximum fine of 6,000 zloty (€1,284) for road offences. The officer can also refer a case to a court if they find that a driver has created high risk – by, for example, fleeing – in which case the court may impose a fine of up to 30,000 zloty (€6,421).
“You can see how the reduction in speed has translated directly into a decrease in fatalities,” said Robert Opas of the police’s traffic bureau, quoted by Rzeczpospolita.
Campaigners have long argued that low fines, unchanged for many years, have contributed to Poland's having one of the EU's highest rates of road fatalities.
We reported on the proposed changes here https://t.co/8w4xXWCTOA
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The fact that Polish drivers have slowed down is confirmed by a fall in the number of driving licences being revoked for exceeding the speed limit by more than 50 km/h in urban areas. “In 2022, we took [licenses from] nearly 29,000 drivers, which is half as many as in 2020,” notes Opas.
However, Janusz Popiel of Alter Ego, an association that provides assistance to victims of road accidents, warns that more research will need to be carried out to ascertain the real impact of higher fines on the number of accidents.
“Without detailed analyses, it is impossible to say whether the fall in the number of accidents has been influenced by high fines or, for example, [rapidly rising] fuel prices, which have reduced the mobility of Poles. Many people have switched to public transport,” he said.
Poland has some of the European Union’s most deadly roads. It recorded the fourth-largest number of road fatalities in relation to population (66 per million inhabitants) among all member states in 2020, the latest year for which EU-wide data have been published by Eurostat.
Main photo credit: Sikorski Arkadiusz/Flickr (under CC BY-ND 2.0)
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
