Unsafe at any speed
The EU's Road Safety Action Program, published in 2001, sets the goal of reducing the number of fatal accidents in the EU by 50 percent by 2010. Poland's road safety program, Gambit 2005, accepted by the government last April - extends the period to 2013. "When we joined the EU, the other countries were already advanced in carrying out the program," explains Andrzej Grzegorczyk, Secretary of the National Road Safety Council (KRBRD). But the government has not been very generous with its funding. "Sources from the budget were reduced by zł.0.5 billion," said Zbigniew Kotlarek, General Director of National Roads and Motorways.
Statistics paint an appalling picture of Poland's road-safety record. According the KRBRD, between 1990-2004 there were around 820,000 accidents in Poland in which nearly 100,000 people died and over a million were injured. The direct costs of these accidents amounted to zł.300 billion. As the infrastructure sector operations officer of the World Bank in Poland, Radek Czapski, pointed out, the social costs of road accidents in Poland amount to 2.5 percent of the country's GDP.
"The general trend in the EU is that while safety on the roads is improving in the EU15, it is stable or worsening in the 10 new member states," director of operations at the European Union Road Federation (ERF) Brendan Halleman said. He underlined that according to 2004 statistics, Poland has the EU's third-largest fatality ratio per million cars. What's more, the ratio grew by three percent between 2001-2004 while most Western countries experienced a double-digit drop.
Halleman stressed the role of infrastructure in improving road safety and preventing accidents. He added that safety procedures should be integrated at all phases - road planning, design, construction and operation. The ERF recommends safety audits prior to a road's opening as well as regular inspections. "Prevention is the most cost-effective approach," Halleman said, adding that 30 percent of problems identified during an audit will result in accidents within five years unless remedied.
Grzegorczyk points to another factor which he thinks is responsible for Poland's tragic statistics. "Huge attention has to be paid to the behavior of those using the roads," he said. Introducing easy to execute fines in place of speeding tickets could be a solution. "In France it reduced the number of fatal accidents by 20 percent," Grzegorczyk says. "Investing in road safety is one of the most profitable investments," says Czapski. The costs, both in terms of money (zł.12 billion in 2004) and in terms of human life (6,500 dead in 2004), are too high to wait any longer.
