Every single day Polish newspapers inform about deadly casualties of traffic accidents. Today this was an 8-years old girl in Poznań who was crossing a street with her Mum through zebra crossing and on a green light. The other day this was an elderly lady who passed away after a truck hit her walking her daily path to a local market. She used pavement for this.  The driver was reversing his car and was sure he did this into a snowdrift. The penalties for such accidents are meagre, which does not help discourage lousy driving habits. Drivers tend to not respect speed limits; typical behaviour of drivers is to neglect signs. Part of the problem is bad law; the regulation which does not give priority to pedestrians while approaching the crossing. Another issue is traffic culture and general social disrespect for all modes of transportation but individual vehicles. The third piece which contributes to this puzzle belongs to Modernism heritage of poorly designed streets.

The efforts manifested in Le Corbusian’s call to kill the ‘street corridor’ which afterwards got translated into some of the postulates of the Athen’s Charter prove fruitful in many Polish cities. The urban streets hierarchy which follows Modernist principles does not invite social life. Instead, by their appearance and meaning, these streets encourage higher driving speeds. Adjusted to accommodate 90 km/h many of larger streets inform a potential driver that speeding up is welcome. Separated from streets, pedestrians paths often lead to nowhere and these related to streets lost their former meaning and importance. Cities became machines, where principles of traffic engineering rule. The hierarchy and subordination of streets to car traffic have acquired a strong position in the traffic laws and regulations. It still translates into the widths of streets and this way generates stronger traffic flows and, as an outcome, congestion. Whereas rights of way should remain larger to contain a variety of social activities and public transportation, continuously maintaining the large traffic lanes for private cars in cities should be eliminated and replaced by other traffic modes and space for other activities/vegetation. This statement has been repeated thousands of times, but this is still not enough.