Switzerland on a Polish Licence — The CHF 40 Vignette & a 140-to-120 Drop

For a Polish driver Switzerland removes the paperwork worry but adds two specifics: a sticker you buy at the border, and a motorway speed you’ll have to consciously rein in.

The vignette comes first. Switzerland charges a single annual motorway vignette of CHF 40 to use its motorways — there are no toll gates, so the vignette is the toll, which differs from the Polish system. Buy it at the border, a post office, or online as an e-vignette tied to your plate, and do it before you join the first motorway. Get caught on a motorway without one and it’s about CHF 200 plus the vignette anyway. Our Switzerland vignette guide walks through the e-vignette and where to buy.

The licence side is the easy part: as an EU holder you need no IDP and no conversion — keep the Polish licence, passport and rental papers in the car and you’re set.

The adjustment that actually matters on the road is speed. Poland lets you run 140 km/h on motorways; Switzerland holds a flat 120, and the enforcement gap is wider than the 20 km/h suggests. Switzerland blankets its roads with fixed and mobile cameras and patrols the tunnels and passes closely — a 10 km/h overshoot is about CHF 120, and the penalty curve steepens sharply above that. The Polish autostrada instinct is an expensive habit here, so set the cruise and leave it. The speeding fine calculator shows how quickly the numbers climb. Towns are 50, open roads 80, and the drink-drive limit is 0.05, slightly looser than Poland’s 0.02 — don’t read that as licence to relax.

The mountain passes are the reward, but they’re high and long: engine-brake the descents rather than overheating the discs, and check the rental’s winter tyres for cold-season trips. Petrol is about $1.92/litre and 112 covers emergencies. Full local rules sit on our Switzerland driving guide.