Poland wins European road safety award after deaths fall by nearly half in decade

Poland has won the European Transport Safety Council’s (ETSC) annual award for road safety in recognition of measures it has taken to reduce road deaths by almost half over the last decade.

It is the first time that Poland has won the ETSC’s Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) Award. According to this year’s PIN report, road deaths in Poland fell by 47% between 2012 and 2022, compared to the EU average of 22%. Only Lithuania (last year’s award winner) had a larger drop, of just over 60%.

Relative change in road deaths between 2012 and 2022 (source: ETSC)

Meanwhile, in terms of the reduction between 2019 and 2022, Poland’s fall of 35% was the joint highest, along with Lithuania.

However, in absolute terms, Poland’s roads still remain relatively dangerous. Its 2020 figure of 50 road deaths per million inhabitants was above the EU average of 46.

The EU countries with the lowest rates of road mortality were Sweden (22 per million) and Denmark (26 per million). The EU’s most dangerous roads were in Romania (86 per million) and Bulgaria (78 per million).

Road deaths per million inhabitants in 2022, with mortality in 2012 for comparison (source: ETSC)

In awarding Poland this year’s prize, the ETSC praised the country for the measures it has taken to improve road safety.

Those include a comprehensive national road safety programme for the period 2021-30 that aims to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 50%, the improvement of infrastructure, and the expansion of the speed camera and time-over-distance camera network.

The ETSC also noted Poland’s increase in drink-driving enforcement checks of 19% on average each year between 2010 and 2019, and the introduction of the emergency corridor system that enables emergency vehicles to access collision sites on motorways.

“In ten years, Poland has greatly improved road safety, and set an example on how to take the issue seriously,” said Antonio Avenoso, the executive director of the ETSC. “There has been a genuine commitment to setting targets, improving infrastructure and boosting enforcement, all key factors in this impressive reduction.”

The ETSC also highlighted areas that Poland could improve. It noted that, due to a lack of financing, Poland has been unable to “launch a national project to develop a methodology for assessing the severity of injuries of road accident victims according to the MAIS (Maximum Abbreviated Injury Score) 3+ scale.”

It found that speed limits and observed vehicle speeds in Poland are still too high, pointing out that the 140 km/h maximum speed limit on Polish motorways is the highest in the EU with the exception of Germany.

Main image credit: GITD (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Anna Hackett

Anna Hackett is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a recent graduate of European Studies from Trinity College Dublin and has had previous journalistic experience with the Irish Independent News & Media group.