A new report by the European Commission finds that though Poland still has the second worst road accident rate in the EU, death rates on Polish roads fell by six percent in 2013.
The report - 'Road Safety Vademecum: road safety trends, statistics and challenges in the EU 2010 - 2013' - finds that 26,000 road fatalities were reported in the EU in 2013, a decrease of around eight percent on the year before.
With an average of 52 deaths per million inhabitants across the 28-nation bloc, Poland came second bottom in the accident league table, with 87 deaths per million - down from 102 per million in 2012.
Only Romania had a worse record last year with 92 deaths per million inhabitants.
The drop in the road death rate in Poland will encourage the government and safety campaigners.
Tougher penalties for drunk driving were announced by the government earlier this year after a 26-year-old man caused the deaths of six pedestrians, including a child, when his BMW veered onto a pavement in Kamien Pomorski on the Baltic Coast on New Year's Day.
“The root of the problem with drink-driving is that this type of behaviour is still socially acceptable,” Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz said in January.
The best road fatality rates in 2013 were in Sweden and the UK, with 28 and 29 dead per million inhabitants respectively, the report finds.
"Following a slow year in 2011 [across the EU] the number of road fatalities is now again substantially decreasing," the report concludes.
During the period 2010 - 2012, the number of pedestrians dieing on the roads in the EU decreased by eight percent, though the number of cyclists killed increased by six percent. (pg)
Ewa Malcher
