Zebra crossings in Warsaw

Zebra crossings, in the Netherlands I learned to always stop for pedestrians who want to cross the road. The only exclusion to the rule I made was when people were visibly doubting and not clearly on the verge of crossing the road. Make up your mind and I will stop I always thought.

I was brought up close to the German border. My parents learned me to stop for anything even close to the zebra crossing. Germans are ultra polite when it comes to stopping for zebra crossings, I also found out as a pedestrian myself when walking on the German streets.

Now Poland, or in my case my experiences in Warsaw. I found out quickly after arriving in this city that a pedestrian should be highly alert when crossing the road. I can remember a couple of close calls, looking into a pair of headlights like Bambi.

I thought it were just a couple of jerks, but later found out that the average driver barely stops for pedestrians wanting to cross the road. It depends a bit of the area though, close to our home the chance is a bit higher that a car will stop at zebra crossings without traffic lights.

This was raising questions to me. Are the rules different here? Are people just less polite in traffic?

At a first glance, the answer to that is pretty simple I found out. Germany and the Netherlands have similar traffic laws concerning zebra crossings. Poland has different rules, way different.

In Poland pedestrians at zebra crossings do not have priority to vehicles driving the road!

The pedestrian only has this priority when already walking on the zebra crossing. And you can only start crossing the road when no cars are nearby. This in combination with a friendly driver who clearly shows behavior of letting the pedestrian cross.

This raised more questions to me because every single person interprets the term 'nearby' differently. The opposition parties in Poland are already fighting for a change of this law since three years, but one of the bigger opposition parties voted against it a few years ago and the proposal was declined with one vote difference.

The opposition party in question is now the leading party by the way (PiS). To make the matter even more confusing, they are working on dusting off the proposal and make this change in the near future...

Clearly a fine. And time for traffic lights there. 

So the verdict is: just be careful out there.