Poland had plans to double its highway capacity to around 2000km (from about 700km – a woeful amount for a country of its size) by about 2012 and whether in the city or on the road the country often feels like one giant building site. However, quite a few of the scheduled works, supported by matched EU/Polish funding, have or will not meet the proposed 2012 target.
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| Just one of many, sadly... |
The road I most regularly travel on is the S8 highway from Warsaw to Wrocław on which only piecemeal improvements are happening . (It’s possible to travel via Katowice but no driver I’ve ever travelled with recommends that route). To give UK readers an idea of the quality of this section of the S8, imagine a typical British B road with one carriageway in either direction functioning as the main road between the capital and the fourth largest city in Poland.
As a result of the conditions, the journey by car between these two cities (a distance of around 350km) can take between 5 hours (at a woeful average of 70km an hour) or, my record so far, 9 hours with traffic (average of about 38km an hour!). A couple of friends recently visited on the day Baraigh O’Bama was in town and it took them 11 hours.
Polish drivers respond by driving like utter maniacs to try and shave time off their journeys, but the physical conditions of the road (single carriageway with more potholes than a Cumbrian potholing holiday) ensure that doing so is never less than dangerous. The first time I travelled on this route, I thought the driver who took me was a total idiot: tailgating and taking increasingly ludicrous risks in order to pass one lorry at a time or treating short stretches of straight road as an ideal opportunity to test the car’s ability to overtake four or five cars whilst a “big rig” came thundering directly at us.
Subsequent journeys have proved he was a milkmaid in comparison to some of the other stupidity I’ve seen on this road in the past couple of years. Polish drivers drive like someone’s life doesn’t depend on it.
But despite having seen people regularly risking life and limb – and a fair few burnt carcasses of cars still lying prone on banks, buried in hedgerows or enveloped around trees – it’s always been a source of black comedy. I joke about it because, to be honest, travelling by road is quite terrifying, and joking makes it easier.
It was brought home to me just how important improving the road network is when I met "L" a few weeks ago. I was teasing L, a good looking guy, about why he didn’t have a girlfriend. After trotting out a few mundane reasons he concluded by saying, “... and both my parents died in a car crash two months ago.”
In heart wrenching detail he then revealed how his parents had been driving to visit his sister and had been hit head-on by another driver taking an insane risk on a blind bend. His mother died instantly, his father three days later in hospital.
Listening to the suffering in his voice and understanding only a fleeting part of the grief he must have been going through, I realised that, although the Polish road building programme is a massive expenditure for both the Government and the EU, the real cost lies in the grief and loss of human capital of people living with the reality of road conditions in the country.
Sadly, L’s experience is – and will continue to be – far too common in Poland. In 2009 there were 12.0 road deaths per 100,000 of population – a total of 4572 - comparing to the UK average of 3.8 road deaths per 100,000.
I’m not in any hurry to get a car.
Driving for 10+ years in Poland I can only agree. It is Wild West out there and it is getting worse as people have more and more powerful cars. I calculate an average of 50Km/h, no matter there I go. So far I was always right.
ReplyDeleteGreeting from Kabaty - Martin
I argue with my students all the time about this. They say "Because the roads are so bad I HAVE TO drive faster"
ReplyDeleteI respond with "How does that make any sense? If something is dangerous you should make it more dangerous?"
They say "But it means it will be quicker than if I don't"
When you think about it, my students are actually intelligent, well educated, normally from strong families quite often with their own young family. So with logic like that I am glad there isn't many hard drugs in Poland or they would say "I know heroine is dangerous, but I find that if I enject one kilo it saves me having to do it over a whole life time." Or something to that effect.
Great blog again Paddy - I agree with a lot of your sentiments here. Unfortunately I can't see anything changing soon as new roads will take a long time to build and mentalities even longer to change.
ReplyDeleteTip - assume, as you get behind the wheel of a car, that all Polish drivers are either homicidal maniacs or suicidal maniacs. You will then not be disappointed by what you see.
ReplyDeleteGee Em - whilst in theory I agree with you the undeniable fact is a double lane carriage way would reduce accidents.
ReplyDeleteWhat's doubly bizarre to me is that Poles are by and large very socially observant, unless they are propelled by petrol in which case the situation is reversed.
But importantly there's none of the "fuck you buddy" gesticulation of the West in it, it's quite a silent and grim determination. Odd.
It does seem very odd that normal people in Poland turn into such anti-social people behind the wheel of a car. I have never understood it either.
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