Fast and Dead

[toja3003]

The sentence “'The road itself is not guilty. It's the drivers who
have to adapt themselves to the road conditions” is pure
simplification. Of course the driver should “adapt” but by our poor
roads, almost without motorways, jams in cities – what does that
mean concretely? 20 km/h? Maybe 30 km/h? That’s impossible
practically. And to go with 100 km/h or more is no problem and no
big danger in Western Europe where you have dense network of good
motorways.

And what about public transport alternatives in Poland? Again
Western Europe. France has TGV, Germany ICE, Italy Pendolino and so
on. You can go with train even 300 km/h and more! And in Poland? 50-
80 at last. Yes, you need for 160 km from Torun to Gdansk 4h or if
you take “quicker” railway via Bydgoszcz you need for 210 km 4h.
Your choice. Interestingly: “quick” train from Bygdoszcz to Torun
(50 km) needs more time than simple (its no joke!) and this simple
needs 1h anyway. So there is just no alternative for a slow car to
go with even slower train.

[paddythen]

Toja, there is a big difference between 20-30km/h and 100km/h.

What about 50, 60 or 70?

Drivers need to decide: what is more important, cutting down journey
times by a relatively small amount or saving people's lives by
driving in a safe manner. If drivers are responsible, they will
make the right choice. If they are irresponsible, then they should
lose their licence until they can learn to drive in a civilised
manner. That's true for Poland and for every other country in the
world.

[88piotr]

I've been driving cars for a long, long time. I was driving
in Germany, France, Spain and, last but not least, in Britain.
Needless to say I've been driving in Poland most time as well.
Poor roads, ok. But if you ask me, the main problem about
insecure and often deadly driving in Poland is a very specific, weird and wicked
mentality of some significant part of the polish "driving
population". I don't want to go into details because I'm
not quite sure if I can tell why it is so. The fact is
that facing this phenomenon some really drastic countermeasures
should be taken by the authority to at least reduce
the growing number of people with suicidal tendencies
travelling around in their deadly machines.
What I mean is a really strict, merciless police supervision,
drastic fines,ruining compensation court sentences and obligatory withdrawal of licences forever.
Should this kind of "martial law" be introduced and pedantically continued just for 2 or 3 years,I bet people in Poland would enjoy remarkably safer trafic even with hardly any new highways.
I know how unpopular the government would become but I'm afraid
there is nothing else to be done to save lives on roads.
Concern and determination of polititians is all we need.

[ladyc]

I agree that a lot of the deadly statistics are due to the driving
culture often ranging from pure carelessness to downright
aggressiveness. Maybe subconsciously Polish people don't feel they
have as much to lose?
Or maybe as 88piotr has pointed out the punishment should be more
severe. It has happened to me more than once that a Polish "road
pirate" I was following magically transformed into a law-abiding
driver as soon as we crossed over the border into Germany.
Today I had my first car accident so I am "in the subject" as you
say. It was nothing serious and was neither fast nor deadly. I was
hit from behind as I stopped for a red light. The driver hit me
because his instinct in driving in Poland told him that I was going
to run the light. Unfortunate, but true.

[ladyc]

Also in the US with each fine from the police for road and traffic
violations your insurance carrier has the right to raise your
premiums. Does it work like that in Poland?