Poland's roads among most deadly in EU

Police under fire in NIK report: photo - PAP/Marcin Bielecki

The Polish Supreme Auditing Office (NIK) finds that Poland has the second highest number of road fatalities per capita in the 28-nation bloc, while also finding that current road safety management institutions are not up to the job.

According to NIK, every year 87 Poles per million inhabitants die from road accidents.

Only Romania has a worse record on road deaths.

The NIK report lambastes the lack of a unified national institution to deal with road safety, with eight different organizations currently having responsibility to educate drivers about road safety and six esponsible for traffic control.

The report criticizes municipal police in particular, suggesting they should lose the right to use mobile speed cameras.

NIK writes that the use of cameras by police “is in many cases prompted not by road safety needs but by the need to gain money for local budgets,” and set up cameras in places where they can maximize income from fines.

The report also revealed that 12% of national roads require urgent repairs.

“Inspections have found that most roads are managed in a way which does not fulfil requirements to maintain them in a proper condition. Compulsory technical surveys were not carried out when building roads,” the report says. (sl/pg)