Yes, you read correctly. In Poland, it will soon wear a reflective vest around on foot. Specifically, a project under discussion in law in the Polish Parliament provides that persons traveling by night, and outside cities, will wear the famous expensive vest (or not) to Karl Lagerfeld, or other clothing with stripes reflective. The text, adopted on 13 June by the Diet (equivalent of the National Assembly), has yet to be considered by the Senate and could come into force by the end of the year.
This amendment to the Highway Traffic Act proposed by the Liberal government of Donald Tusk and voted unanimously, is the only measure found by deputies to respond to road hazards affecting the country. Polish roads are among the most dangerous in Europe, as recalled this article from The Economist. “Poland has a mortality rate on the road to 110 million, almost double the European average (60), and even pathetic in relation to the United Kingdom (30)”, tells the British liberal weekly.
These traffic fatalities are mostly motorists but also among them cyclists or pedestrians. He regularly comes to speeding drivers tomb to open narrowly avoid nobody journeying on making sidewalk office. The night, which starts at 15 hours in the winter, the risks are even higher. We move on foot of a small town to the other, after drinking a glass of beer or even vodka, or just you come home after a day’s work.
The yellow vest, presented as a comprehensive insurance by his supporters, yet does not please everyone. The journalist Kowalski published on his blog, an article that rebels against this omnipotence granted to the automobile. The text has been seen more than 100,000 times and generated hundreds of comments, most hostile to “oblivious pedestrians”.
Speed drunk. Rather than encourage motorists to respect the limits speed, ask radar or speed bumps or establish a technical inspection of vehicles, we choose to defer responsibility for accidents on pedestrians. In other words, if a pedestrian not wearing a yellow vest is reversed, at night and in the countryside, it will be possible to exempt the driver from responsibility, even if he hurtled at high speed and with alcohol in blood… Poland does not have, like France with the Baiter Act 1985, a law considering the driver responsible when his motorized object is involved in an accident.
“After the entry of the country into the European Union in 2004, European funds were used to build beautiful roads on which we got used to driving fast, well beyond the 90 km / h permitted” recounts Olivier Schneider, a French-Polish activist ( his blog here, in Polish ) who writes a column on transport on the FM radio . “The car is still queen in Poland,” says the activist. There are some months when the government of Warsaw has proposed radar installations on Polish roads, most of the political parties themselves up against it “draconian”. Radar in areas where we have already seen accidents, perhaps, they claimed in essence, but not willing to chance on the roads.
The debate on road safety and the place of the automobile in society causes, in Poland as elsewhere, lively discussions. In Warsaw or Krakow, battalions of police verbalize pedestrians suddenly fines of 100 zlotys (€ 25) passing through the red light or outside zebra crossings. Regularly, the opportunity of a driving license for cyclists or pedestrians even comes up.