When it comes to road safety, Poland has nothing to boast about. In this respect, we have long been dead last in the ranking of European Union member states. Young drivers aged 18-24 are responsible for the majority of accidents (12%) in Poland. Data shows that between 2018 and 2022, the youngest drivers caused as many as 30,000 accidents. The main causes were excessive speed, failure to respect the right of way and not taking into account the rights of pedestrians.

The nik.gov.pl website states that driver candidates are not prepared to safely participate in road traffic. The Supreme Audit Office’s intervention uncovered errors at every stage of training new drivers. The irregularities were found:

• in the quality of the courses,
• in the work of instructors,
• in the activities of WORDs (training centres for new drivers)
• in the work of examiners.

NIK alerts about the necessity to change the drivers’ education system, as the costs of car accidents and car collisions annually are up to 39 billion Polish zloty (€8,5 billion).

Police cite speeding, recklessness and drink-driving as the most frequent causes of road accidents. However, it is becoming increasingly evident to the society that young drivers are poorly trained.

NIK found that "the training of driver candidates is aimed at achieving positive test results and not at acquiring an adequate knowledge and skills and, in particular, training the proper behaviour that would guarantee safe and responsible driving."

The trainee is currently only required to memorise theoretical topics. The NIK points out that driving courses do not form in students the attitude needed for a good driver.

Moreover, many questions on the state theory exam contain errors or are unclear.

"A survey of 300 randomly selected exam questions showed that every twentieth question and answer choice was formulated in an ambiguous manner and every twelfth contained errors," reads nik.gov.pl report.

"Exam tourism" mentioned in the report refers to cases in which a student from a big city decides to take their exam in a small city. To many potential new drivers travelling up to a few hundred kilometres to take the state exam elsewhere is still more worthwhile than taking the driving test in a crowded city.

"In the course of the inspection it was found that out of more than 18,000 people taking the exam in Warsaw, as many as 84% passed the theory test in Warsaw and the road test in one of the smaller cities of Mazovia or Podlasie," states the NIK report.

It is also worth mentioning that the source of financing of WORD are fees collected for exams, including resits and training. This leads to corruption. 60% of the revenue from road tests is generated by fees for retakes.

NIK has no intention of tolerating shortcomings in the training of young drivers any longer. It has prepared a list of recommendations for the Minister of Digitalisation, the Minister of Infrastructure and the district governors.

It lists, among others:

• changing the financing of WORDs,
• assigning the creation and verification of examination questions to the Motor Transport Institute,
• determining the validity of theoretical exams,
• the introduction of an obligation to take the road test at a WORD centre close to the training centre where the positive result of the theory test was obtained,
• the introduction of solutions which would make it impossible to retake a state driving licence examination on the same day the previous driving test was failed,
• amending qualification exams for instructors and examiners.

Source: nik.gov.pl