Tragedy in Stalowa Wola due to drunk driving

The tragedy in Stalowa Wola, where a 37-year-old man, overtaking another car in a huge Audi S7, collided head-on with a vehicle on the opposite side of the road, shows how dramatic the final result of a drink-driving accident can be. A married couple traveling in it (parents of three children) died, their 2.5-year-old son survived.

This year the police have already caught over 49 thousand drunk drivers (last year there were 99 thousand). "On the first Sunday of July we stopped 467 intoxicated drivers, a day earlier only a few less. This scale is alarming," says Inspectp Robert Opas from the Traffic Bureau of the National Police Headquarters.

From January to May, the police initiated 20.8 thousand cases for driving under the influence of alcohol - that’s 1.4 thousand more than in the same period last year. On the other hand, the number of crimes ascertained this year increased by almost 2 thousand (to 19.5 thousand) according to the latest data published by “Rzeczpospolita”. 

The statistics are all the more worrying because, due to the pandemic, the police checked drivers’ sobriety three times less often - last year they performed 7 million tests (there are fewer rapid screening tests), while in previous years about 20 million. 

Last year, intoxicated people caused 2015 accidents, killing 271 people. That means 11 percent of fatalities were lost in accidents caused by intoxicated drivers, Insp. Opas said.

(rp.pl)