If you are driving an overnormative vehicle with the length exceeding 23 m, are you obliged to be piloted by assisting pilot vehicles?

In the photo, a red tractor unit is carrying a wind turbine blade on an extended semi-trailer, and the whole combination barely fits on a narrow forest road. An abnormal (oversize or overweight) vehicle more than 23 m long must be escorted - answer A.

The Regulation on the escorting of abnormal vehicles states that escorting is required for the journey of a vehicle that exceeds at least one of these values: length 23 m, width 3.2 m, height 4.5 m or actual total mass 60 tonnes; above 30 m in length there must be two escort vehicles. For comparison, an ordinary combination of two vehicles may be at most 18.75 m long, and a combination of three vehicles 22 m, so a combination longer than 23 m is clearly beyond the normal limits - it blocks junctions and takes up adjacent lanes on bends. That is why the escort vehicle drives in front of the combination, warns other drivers and stops traffic if necessary. Answer C introduces a time condition that the Regulation does not provide for.

Legal basis: § 2 para. 1 and 2 of the Regulation of the Minister of Infrastructure of 8 November 2023 on escorting abnormal vehicles; Art. 62 para. 4a and Art. 64 para. 1 point 3 of the Road Traffic Act (Prawo o ruchu drogowym)