After two years of extremely restrictive rules that prohibited trucks from overtaking regardless of current and local traffic jams, the Polish government has finally announced a slight relaxation of the law. The mandatory overtaking ban will be lifted at night, when traffic jams are at their lightest.
The amendment, prepared by the Polish Ministry of Infrastructure, proposes to lift the mandatory overtaking ban from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. During this time, trucks will be allowed to overtake freely on almost all two-lane motorways and expressways, provided that no additional overtaking ban is imposed on that section. The ministry explains that it decided to apply this model to the rules in Germany, where the bans are often in effect every hour.
It is not yet known when the new rules might come into force. They will not be discussed in parliament until the fall, so it could take at least a few months. It is also possible that the Ministry of Infrastructure will withdraw from the project due to critical voices. The Ministry of the Interior and Administration, which oversees the police, has already expressed this opinion. According to the ministry, lifting the bans at night could be dangerous, as it is harder for drivers to observe their surroundings and judge the speed of oncoming vehicles after dark. From the industry’s point of view, the aforementioned change would clearly be a step in the right direction. After all, six hours of freedom is better than nothing. On the other hand, even with such an adjustment, Polish truck regulations would remain among the most restrictive in Europe, while retaining their absurd character. Moreover, the aforementioned inspiration from German regulations is, to put it mildly, selective. To begin with, German overtaking bans are usually in force for much shorter periods. They are often limited to strict peak hours, for example from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. or from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Even on the busiest stretches, German bans usually start between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. and end between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Against this background, the Polish idea of maintaining a ban from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. seems very exaggerated. Moreover, such hourly traffic bans appear in Germany only on selected stretches that meet certain criteria. These measures are accompanied by traffic volume measurements and accident studies, and each decision is then assessed individually by the state parliaments. For example, in the most densely populated and industrialized state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a ban on overtaking for trucks can only be introduced on roads with more than 50,000 vehicles per day, of which at least 5 percent are trucks. In Poland, only sections of motorways and expressways located near large cities will meet these conditions.