Drivers the biggest threat on Warsaw roads

Kacper Kępiński

21 of July '23

Accident on Grochowska Street

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Warsaw's ZDM has checked how safe the capital's roads are. Although there were no fatal accidents from the beginning of February to the second half of April this year, the ideal is still far from being reached. The perpetrators of most accidents are drivers, including those in which other road users are injured.

Two-thirds of the injured on Warsaw streets are victims of accidents caused by car drivers. In very few such situations, the perpetrators themselves are injured. In the vast majority of cases, accidental road users suffer for their mistakes. Of the 554 people injured and killed in accidents caused by drivers in 2022, only 35 times were injured by the drivers themselves. The victims were primarily pedestrians, passengers and cyclists.

perpetrators and victims of accidents

With how dangerous a tool a car can be, drivers have the main responsibility for road safety. In accidents caused by pedestrians, the injured were usually the perpetrators themselves; similar statistics can be observed among motorcyclists. Both of these groups cause accidents many times less often than drivers, and situations in which they endanger others in this way are incidental.

perpetrators of accidents by mode of transportation

Inattentive and law-breaking bicyclists pose a danger mainly to themselves and pedestrians. In accidents involving public transportation, passengers are most often injured.

accidents involving pedestrians—perpetrators

Research shows that the most common cause of accidents is excessive speed. As a result of failure to adjust speed to traffic conditions, 10 people were killed in 2022. Drivers, exceeding speed, kill others. Among the aforementioned ten victims of such accidents are three car drivers and two motorcyclists, but also two pedestrians and as many as three passengers who were riding with the perpetrators of the accident.

main causes of accidents

Roads are nevertheless getting safer. The 33 accident victims are three times fewer than a decade ago and nearly ten times fewer than in the early 1990s. The 16 pedestrians who died in accidents are also the fewest ever. The 8 accident fatalities (including five pedestrians) from January to June 2023, is twice as low as it was a year ago.

We are moving toward Vision Zero with consistent work on road infrastructure. Excluding, for example, situations where crossing the roadway can be dangerous," says Vice Mayor Olszewski.—Our goal is to focus on those areas where dangerous incidents are indeed occurring, in order to achieve an effect that is reflected in the numbers, he adds.

ZDM annually builds more than a dozen traffic lights, installs lighting at pedestrian crossings, installs slowing thresholds, pedestrian refuges and introduces other forms of traffic calming—all these measures are intended to help achieve the so-called Vision Zero, i.e. a full year without a fatality on the roads. The statistics are also influenced by changes in the law that better protect pedestrians at crossings.