Driving a vehicle by a person in an inebriated condition or under the influence of drugs – remarks about the crime from the article 178a of the Penal Code

Abstract

The security threat in public transport relates to the occurrence of different types of negative phenomena. Among them, instances of driving vehicles by a person in an inebriated condition or under the influence of drugs can be mentioned. Because of the increasing number of such acts, the Polish legislator penalised the indicated behaviour as an offence against the safety in the public transport in 2000. The main aim of the foregoing coverage is to present the general characteristics of the crime specified in Art. 178a of the Penal Code, having regard to certain punitive measures, which can be handed down to its perpetrators, as well as the scale of the phenomenon in Poland. Additionally, efforts have been made to indicate, how to counteract such negative deeds. The coverage is generally based on the dogmatic method. It contains references to the normative material, legal doctrine, judicature and statistical data. As the result of the consideration, it has been stated that the description of the penalised act in the Art. 178a of the Penal Code does not give rise to concerns, except for § 4 of this article. The stipulated criminal sanctions for these crimes enable to adjudicate as a part of the judicial punishment, which is equal to the gravity of the offence committed, hence should not be tightened up. In spite of the huge repressiveness especially of the mandatorily adjudicated punitive measure, which results in a driving ban, the amount of committed crimes mentioned in the Art. 178a of the Penal Code does not decrease. The paper concludes with final remarks, from which a basic deduction arises: the cumulative social issue of increasing number of people abusing alcohol regularly, has a fundamental impact on the scale of the crime from the Art. 178a of the Penal Code in Poland.