#Poland #impounding #cars #drunk #drivers
If you drive with 1.5 per thousand of alcohol in Poland and are stopped by a police patrol, you will automatically lose your car, which will be confiscated by the state. Such a regulation, causing a lot of controversy, has been in force since March 14. The Polish police soon found out that it was probably not a completely happy decision. A revision of the new law is already being prepared a month after its entry into force.
Many Polish transport experts expressed their doubts about him from the beginning. Let’s recall from the law, valid since March 14, at least the most basic: if a driver is stopped and breathes 1.5 per thousand or more, his car should be automatically confiscated by the state and he will of course lose his driving license. If a drunk driver causes an accident, one per thousand is enough to impound, and if it is a repeat offender, then even less.
A few days after the start of validity, however, Polish Auto Swiat magazine he described how impounding cars for drunk drivers actually looks like. According to him, the police should secure the car in such a way that the driver with alcohol in his blood cannot drive away, but at the same time, they themselves do not have the authority to impound him. The car must be towed to the parking lot, where the first problem arises – who pays for the towing and parking.
According to the aforementioned magazine, the bill for a ten-day stand is in the order of hundreds of zlotys (thousands of crowns). And since the decision to impound and confiscate the car is completely under the control of the courts, the decision can easily take several months or even a year. And then suddenly the bill for parking a parked car climbs to tens of thousands of zlotys. Despite the fact that a parked car that is not driven quickly loses its value.
So it may well happen that the subsequent auction of the impounded car will fetch less than what it cost to store it. Some cars are actually not worth confiscating at all. The Polish magazine also describes the story of one of the first confiscated cars, which was given to a “trusted” person (in this case, a friend of the drunk driver) at the decision of the prosecutor. She is to take care of the car and hand it over to the police at any time upon request. Precisely because of the confusion regarding storage costs.
By the way of Polish radio RMF from March 14 to the beginning of April, the police caught a total of 282 drivers who met the conditions for confiscating and confiscating the car.
Due to the above-mentioned ambiguities, the law was met with considerable criticism, including from official sources. “I have the impression that although the intention was good, the law is written very sloppily,” he quotes Polish Press Agency Minister of the Interior Marcin Kierwinský. That is also why, according to him, it should be reviewed, the Polish government is already discussing changes.
The most important thing will be that the car will no longer be forfeited compulsorily, confiscation will be optional and it will depend on the court’s decision whether to take the car from the offender and auction it off, or if only an appropriate financial penalty will follow. In other words, when the patrol stops the driver, someone sober will be able to drive away with his car and there will be no need to tow it. But before the amendment to the law goes through the approval process, the mandatory impoundment of the car will remain in force.
The changes are also welcomed by former policeman and now traffic expert Marek Konkolewski, who has criticized the law on mandatory vehicle impoundment in the Polish media from the very beginning. However, it is also necessary to point out that he does not criticize the confiscation itself, but the current setting of the law, while he would extend the confiscation to some offenses other than alcohol behind the wheel.
“The government just took advantage of a few accidents that got a lot of publicity in the media and played on people’s emotional strings,” he said in Auto Swiat magazine.
“Turning the obligation into an option is the way in the right direction. It will be up to the courts to assess each case individually and only after considering all the variables decide on confiscating the car,” Konkolewski told the mentioned Polish magazine. Previous criminal offenses or the offender’s financial situation can be taken into account, possibly even the fact of how much danger he caused by his actions, the traffic expert further mentioned.
He also stated that he might also consider the limit of 1.5 per thousand, after which confiscation would automatically come. In Poland, it is legal to drive with a maximum of 0.2 per thousand of alcohol, but from 0.5 per thousand it is a crime, not a misdemeanor. He would therefore reduce the level of possible confiscation of the car to just half a million.
