Assessment of road traffic safety in Poland

The paper discusses the fundamental problems of road traffic safety in Poland. A comparison of selected safety characteristics against the background of European Union countries is presented. Some road traffic safety improvement programs are also introduced.For many years, we have been observing increasing traffic intensity on roads in Poland, as well as on roads all over the world. This is caused by the growing number of registered vehicles and the increasing mobility of society. The consequence of this situation is many adverse phenomena. These include issues related to the impact of road transport on the environment and the threats of traffic accidents and their consequences. The consequences of accidents in the transport system worldwide constitute a significant social and economic problem. According to the World Health Organization
every day, more than three thousand people die while fulfilling transport needs.
More than 95% are victims of road accidents. The individual risk of being a fatal or seriously injured victim in an accident, measured by the number of victims per 1 billion vehicle-kilometers (vkm) traveled, is:
– 0.2 victims/1 billion vkm in air and rail transport, – 15.2 victims/1 billion vkm in road transport.
Every year, more than a million people die on roads around the world (one person every 30 seconds), and approx. 45 million people suffer various types of injuries and in most cases require long-term and expensive treatment.
In European Union countries, road accidents contribute to the death of approx. 35 thousand people every year. This number corresponds to the population of a medium-sized city. More than 1.6 million people are injured. The social costs of these events are very high and it is estimated that in 2009 they amounted to approx. 130 billion EUR [5]. (…)

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