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Towing a caravan in Poland

Polish traffic law has no word for a caravan. Search the whole of Prawo o ruchu drogowym for kempingowa and you find nothing. The act knows a przyczepa, a trailer, and a zespół pojazdów, a combination of vehicles, and it is the combination that almost every rule below is addressed to. The caravan’s weight almost never decides which line of the table you are on. Almost: Poland has one weight rule that most countries do not, and it is about the car, not the caravan.

The two numbers in article 20

Article 20.3 splits vehicles into two groups outside built-up areas. A combination is not in the car group; it sits in point 2, together with everything heavier:

• Motorway (autostrada), expressway (droga ekspresowa) or any dual carriageway with at least two lanes in each direction: 80 km/h.
• All other roads: 70 km/h.

The line just above, for a car, reads 140 on a motorway, 120 on a dual expressway, 100 on a single-carriageway expressway or an ordinary dual carriageway, and 90 on everything else. Hitching a trailer moves you one line down, and there it stops. There is no weight threshold, no concession for a light trailer, and no credit for a car towing well within its limit. A 600 kg teardrop and a two-tonne twin-axle get the same two numbers.

In town, and in a residential zone

• 50 km/h in a built-up area — which in Poland means exactly what the signs say it means. Article 2 defines a built-up area as an area marked by the relevant road signs, and nothing else.
• 20 km/h in a strefa zamieszkania, a residential zone, signposted at every entrance and exit. The figure applies to every vehicle alike.

The rule to check before you leave home

Article 62.1 says the actual laden mass of a trailer pulled by a car may not exceed the actual laden mass of the car pulling it. Both sides of that comparison are what the vehicles weigh on the day, with luggage and passengers aboard — not what the plates allow. A light car travelling nearly empty behind a heavily loaded caravan can therefore break this rule while staying inside the towing limit written in the registration document. The two requirements are separate, and both have to hold.

Length, and how many trailers

• A combination behind an ordinary car may consist of two vehicles: the car and one trailer. Three-vehicle combinations belong to farm tractors and slow vehicles (article 62.4).
• A two-vehicle combination may be up to 18.75 m long. Longer than that needs a permit (article 62.4a and 4b).
• With a load aboard: no wider than 2.55 m, no more than 2 m beyond the rear of the combination, and no taller than 4 m (article 61).

A rear overhang of more than 0.5 m has to be marked. For a trailer pulled by a car, Poland accepts a plain red flag of at least 50 by 50 cm at the outermost edge, instead of the red-and-white striped board other vehicles need (article 61.9.4).

Gaps, lanes and tunnels

• Leave a gap that can be overtaken into. Outside built-up areas, on a two-way road with two lanes, a vehicle or combination longer than 7 m must keep enough distance from the motor vehicle ahead that another driver can pull safely into the gap. It is switched off while you are overtaking yourself, and where overtaking is banned (article 19.3).
• On a motorway or expressway, the minimum gap in metres is half your speed in km/h — 40 m at 80 km/h — except while overtaking (article 19.3a).
• In a tunnel longer than 500 m outside a built-up area, a combination keeps 80 m to the vehicle in front. Cars up to 3.5 t and buses keep 50 m (article 19.4).
• Lanes. On a motorway or expressway with three or more lanes in your direction, a combination longer than 7 m may use only the two lanes nearest the right-hand edge (article 16.2a).

Nobody rides in the caravan

Article 63.3 forbids carrying people in a trailer outright. The exceptions are children to and from school behind a farm tractor, work crews behind a farm tractor at up to 20 km/h, passengers seated in a tourist road train, and children in a bicycle trailer. A caravan is none of those; on the move it carries no one.

Lights on, all year

Article 51.1 requires dipped headlights whenever you drive in normal visibility. Between dawn and dusk you may use daytime running lights instead, if the vehicle has them (article 51.2). There is no summer exemption.

Which licence

Licence categories sit in a separate act, the ustawa o kierujących pojazdami. Article 6.1.6 gives category B a car up to 3,500 kg with a light trailer — one whose permissible mass is at most 750 kg — or with a heavier trailer as long as the whole combination stays within 4,250 kg. Above 3,500 kg the combination is open only to a driver who has passed the extra practical part of the state examination and has it entered in the licence (article 6.2). Category B+E takes a trailer of up to 3,500 kg.

What is changing

Since the consolidated text of 2024, article 20 has changed exactly once, and not in your line: Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1676 raised the figure for a farm tractor, with or without a trailer, from 30 to 40 km/h with effect from 3 March 2026. Every other act amending the road traffic act published since that consolidation was fetched and read one by one, and none of them touches article 20. That was checked rather than assumed.

Campeur plans Poland at 70

The planner carries one speed per country and it must never sit above the law. For Poland that is 70, the figure for ordinary roads. Motorway and expressway legs come out 10 km/h pessimistic, which is the right direction to be wrong in.

For contrast, see Spain in detail, where the trailer’s weight makes no difference either but the numbers are 90 and 80, and France in detail, where a weight line at 3.5 tonnes decides which limits you get.

Source: Ustawa z dnia 20 czerwca 1997 r. – Prawo o ruchu drogowym (Dz.U. 1997 nr 98 poz. 602), articles 2, 16, 19, 20, 51, 61, 62 and 63, and Ustawa z dnia 5 stycznia 2011 r. o kierujących pojazdami (Dz.U. 2011 nr 30 poz. 151), article 6. Read from the Sejm’s own ELI service, in the consolidated text maintained by the Chancellery of the Sejm, whose header is dated 3 March 2026. Every act amending the road traffic act published after the 2024 consolidation (Dz.U. 2024 poz. 1251) was then downloaded separately and searched for changes to article 20; only Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1676 makes one. Checked 11 August 2026.

The figures above come from the official text itself and are dated, but Campeur is not a legal source and rules change. Check the signs and the act in force before you travel. Found an error? Send it to kontakt@campeur.eu and the page will be corrected.