As I have said before, the best thing about my job is that I get paid to have conversations with people. Now this isn't always thrilling work but sometimes, when you have an interesting student, it can be really interesting. Today was one of those days! My student today was a forensic expert, his specialty being road accident scenes. This being his area of expertise, it seemed only natural to talk about roads with him. Perhaps you are thinking, how can you have an interesting conversation about roads? Well you have obviously never seen Polish roads. If you ask Polish people what the worst thing about Poland is, most of them will reply "the roads", and they are correct. In short, Polish roads are terrible. Most roads are in a terrible condition, sometimes with huge potholes, and there is a serious lack of motorways.
To put the situation in context, it is estimated that to connect all the main cities in Poland requires 18, 036 km of motorways and dual carriageways. Currently Poland has only 673 km of motorways and 230 km of dual carriageways. This means that most of the roads in Poland are small, two lane country roads. On these roads huge lorries transporting goods from Western Europe to Russia must travel along with ordinary cars and buses. The result of all this, is a lot of traffic accidents.
Last weekend was a holiday weekend (for the day of the dead) and the roads were extra busy with people going home for the weekend. The last figures I saw put the number of people killed in traffic accidents last weekend at around 70, with the number of injured much higher and the number of accidents higher still. Poland has a population of around 34 million, much lower than that of the UK. Can you imagine if 70 people were killed in traffic accidents in one weekend in the UK? This phenomenon of increased traffic accidents is not limited to Poland. When I was living in Spain I observed exactly the same problem. At the time I found it really strange, because in fact the Spanish news was predicting before the weekend even began that there would be a high number of deaths. They were resigned to the fact that a lot of people would die and were saying that if the figure remained below 100 then it wouldn't have been that bad!! To me and to many other people from the UK, this is completely bizarre. To have so many fatal accidents on the roads is not common.
When I asked my student today about the problem in Poland he agreed it was a huge problem and, without my prompting or asking him, told me that the UK was actually the safest country in Europe for driving. His reasons for this were threefold. Firstly, he explained that roads in the UK are better designed and structured. Secondly, he said the driving culture in the UK is different from that of Poland. People are not always trying to overtake on small two lane country roads. Off course there are some idiot drivers in the UK who will, however in Poland it is much more common for people to do this. The reason for this, is a lack of motorways. People are frustrated at having to travel everywhere by small, winding roads and to save some time they overtake and speed. I'm not condoning speeding at all but to put it into to context, to travel from Krakow to Gdansk ( a distance of 612 km) by car takes around 12 hours due to the roads. The third and final reason why the UK is safer than Poland, and this will not please liberals or Jeremy Clarkson fans, is because of the high number of surveillance equipment. In Poland, it is not common to see a speed camera, in fact I have never seen one. People speed because they can get away with it. In the UK people are worried because there are speed cameras everywhere and although this may annoy some people ,who would either wish to speed or are convinced of some government conspiracy to monitor them, it actually saves lives and that's according to the expert not me.
So what can be done about the Polish road situation? The record of Polish governments on this issue is not good. Between 1990 and 2001, only 138 km of motorway were built and only 33 km of dual carriageway were built. In the year 2004, only 67 km of motorway and 8.8 km of dual carriageway were built. There are however plans to build a lot more and with Poland hosting Euro 2012 in only 5 years time, this process will probably be sped up. It should certainly be the main priority of any Polish government. If any government can improve the roads, they can be assured of everlasting popularity.
