Can you Polish drivers?

Polish drivers are irresponsible, aggressive and dangerous — according to drivers from other European countries. Is it true or it is just a stereotype? According to the European statistics, Poland has the weakest road statistics In Europe along with Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. Check this infographic out.

We were curious what drivers themselves think about it. We asked them directly — about their driving experience. Vivadrive is in business of changing driving behaviour so we were also interested about people’s motivations to improve their driving technique. Is there anything that would make them drive better — 🥕 or 🏒 :)

We interviewed Polish and European drivers and here are some interesting findings.

What type of driver you are?

Most drivers rate themselves better than average — wherever they are. We asked drivers in different countries — Poland, Belgium, Portuga and Russia. Everywhere 70–80% drivers claims that they are better than the others. In psychology it’s called an illusory superiority.

Is there anything you could improve in your driving?

We asked people whether there is anything that they should improve to become better and safer drivers. Despite drivers’ confidence in their abilities, many admit to practising dangerous behaviour on the road.

• Among Polish drivers there two aspects: not respecting speed limits (quite obvious when you drive in Poland) and using phones while driving. Being more patients could also help!
• The European drivers’ answers spread more evenly.

Polishing driving

If there is room for improvement, so what is the most important factor? Number one is of course speeding — it is the riskiest kind of aggressive driving, according the researchers from Canada’s University of Waterloo who examined data from 28 million trips for possible links between four bad driving behaviours — link to the study.

Is there anyway to change people’s behaviour? Let’s give voice to drivers :) Some answered that in order to improve road safety

• Other people should driver better
• We should remove speed limits
• Trucks should disappear …

What is your motivation to improve driving?

But what do the numbers say?

• Poles are really competitive and love being rewarded for their behaviour. That’s why loyalty programs like Vitay, Biedronka or Payback are so popular in Poland and almost 60% of Poles belong to a loyalty program. Intrinsic motivation like becoming a better driver or a motivation to improve it’s skills (e.g. feedback or coaching) are less popular among Polish drivers.
• Again European drivers have more spread answers.

We are now working with professional drivers to learn about their perspective and motivation. If you are curious to know more, you can contact us — VivaDrive at contact@vivadrive.io or mat@viavdrive.io.

Vivadrive helps companies and organizations build better drivers and optimize fleet costs including fuel consumption, services and insurance costs and residual vehicle value. We also recommend companies how to electrify their car fleets — how to fit Electric Vehicles in their car parks.