Speed Limit In Serbia

[Arlyne Doepner]

Thelimits shown above apply only if there are no other signs present, as the signs may prescribe a lower or a higher speed limit (limits of 80 km/h or higher can also be found within inhabited places).

Speed limit by vehicle type:

Driving in the Balkans seems to have received a lot of notoriety and before booking my solo trip to Serbia, I was not sure if renting a car was a good idea. I am a confident driver in general but some of the stories I have heard (narrow roads, undisciplined drivers, etc) made me apprehensive about planning a road trip in Serbia. I have driven solo in Croatia & Slovenia before without any issues, and with a friend in Romania who was a local, and my experience so far has not been bad. So, I decided to take the plunge and drive in Serbia as well.

Having said that, the overall experience was still good, and I managed to get a Fiat 500 for a pretty decent price, which turned out to be a great car (cruise control on the highways, phone connectivity to the car screen to display the GPS route, great performance on unpaved roads, etc); so, I highly recommend you get this car if you have the option.

On my road trip in Serbia, although I did find a lot of drivers speeding on the highways as well as the interior roads, I did not feel they were rash or dangerous in any way. Do be careful on the winding roads though, specifically when you are in the mountains, and while overtaking on the single lane roads where some drivers tend to overspeed only to overtake slower and larger vehicles ahead of them and end up on the wrong side of the road for far too long, facing the oncoming traffic. This happened far too many times for my comfort and can be a little unnerving.

This is why it is extremely important that you follow speed limits and overtake only when you deem it safe, and when the road signs allow for you to. Also, you could wait for the 2+1 road which you will find at regular intervals. Do not let the vehicles behind you, who might be tailgating, unnerve you or stress you out. Keep your calm, follow the rules, and you will be just fine!

On a road trip in Serbia, you're likely to come across some rough, unpaved roads too. Although the inter-city roads are wide, well-paved and smooth to drive on, and the roads within the cities aren't too bad either, there are specific destinations you will come across that'll take you through not-so-great roads. Two such experiences were - the road to the Vista Point in Uvac Nature Reserve (a gorgeous place to visit but quite hard to reach by road), and Banjska Stena in Tara National Park. My FIAT 500 performed fairly well on these roads but only because it was a dry day, the rains would have made it impossible to get to the destinations. The gravel roads were also narrow, which is a little scary because you don't know if you will have enough space (and confidence) to allow a vehicle to pass if they come from the opposite direction!

On both these roads, at some stage, I got a little nervous and abandoned my car a few miles before the final destination, and decided to walk it instead of risking it. There are no safety issues in Serbia, thankfully, so leaving a car locked in the middle of wilderness wasn't going to be as much of stress to me as continuing to drive on those uneven, inclined, tapering roads.

Now this is where I struggled a little. When it comes to parking in a city, there are usually two options: park on the street or a designated parking spot. Street parking is, needless to say, much cheaper however, these must be paid for by SMS only! This means, firstly, that it becomes imperative to buy a local SIM if you're planning a road trip in Serbia. A local SIM can also help in other ways - finding your way around, GPS, internet connectivity on the go, etc. However, if you are getting a tourist SIM (which has excellent offers on data & local calling minutes), make sure to ask them to top up with extra dinars which you can use to pay for parking.

Although it can be a little difficult to navigate your way in certain areas, I still maintain, cars are the best way to get around in Serbia. When I am in a busy city, I usually find a parking spot and leave my car there, and explore the city on foot or in trams/ buses. However, to go from one city to another, or simply to explore the stunning mountains, national parks and nature reserves, there isn't a better way to get around than in a car. If you are not very confident and comfortable driving yourself, I recommend you rent a car with a driver, which will come at an extra cost of course but will not only give you the flexibility of following your own itinerary but also the peace of having someone who knows the roads, rules, routes and the country well!

Serbia is definitely a country we want to visit in the future. I have never thought of renting a car there, because I assumed the public transport system would bring us everywhere. But reading your post really made me change my mind. A car seems to be an economical and flexible way to see the country. Good to know, that we might have to leave the car at some point and walk. We just did this in Iceland a few times and I actually enjoyed it.

Serbia looks such a beautiful place to visit. It was good to know about your road trip there. I am quite inclined to visit Serbia, but I am not a confident driver at all. The tips you shared for driving in Serbia is surely helpful for all those who want to go behind the wheel.

And yes, even I am surprised at the rental company who wanted to charge extra!

I have always had Serbia on my list but never though of a road trip there. It surely looks like cars are the great way to enjoy the sceneries and a very convenient way too. As you said I do not like driving in the city too. It is best to get out and have a relaxed drive. I will keep in mind that car rentals are cheaper and not the gas.

I have just added Serbia to our bucket list! I totally agree with you that it is better to get out of crowded cities and enjoy the countryside which is what we do all the time. Good tips about not driving in Belgrade and that Serbians are safe drivers. ?

I have always wanted to travel to Serbia. One of my good family friends from home is actually from Serbia and she is always telling us how badly she would like us to travel there with her! I would like to have my own car while I am there so I can travel on my own time and wherever I would please! Toll roads no matter what are always a go to on my travels, makes things a lot easier and allows me to get to places much faster!

You are much braver than I am when it comes to driving in places I am unfamiliar with or on unpaved roads. Great information though for someone who prefers to get behind the wheel and have an adventure.

On the travel wish list! Would love to visit Serbia. We have met Serbians travelling and they always talked so much about their beautiful country. I would want to do the drive and have the flexibility to meander at my pace. But I agree with you about not having a car inside bigger cities. Good to know that not all roads were created equal. And no map may help with that! I might look at a car and driver for parts of the trip where I might want to just enjoy the view.

This page maps the default speed limits as defined in the legislation or regulation texts in machine-readable form. For verifiability, each entry in the table below references the appropriate legislation or at least an official guide(book). Contributions are welcome but it is necessary to maintain a strict regime regarding both machine-readability (for it to be of any use) and verifiability, see the section Contribution guidelines.

Note for mappers: This overview is meant for data consumers, to be used in order to infer default speed limits in cases where no explicit maxspeed=* is signed. It is not advisable to use it as a mapper to set certain speed limits when there is no sign. Rather, as a mapper, you should tag whatever leads to a certain road classification. For example, when you happen upon a rural dirt road without speed limit signs in Latvia, rather tag it with surface=dirt than with maxspeed=80. The former is easily verifiable, the latter is not and may become plain wrong when the law changes.

Note for data consumers: Check out osm-legal-default-speeds. It includes a parser that generates a JSON from the data on this wiki page, a Kotlin library (for Java/JVM, JavaScript and native targets) that interprets the same as reference implementation for How to read this table. Further, there is a demo site where one can try out what the library returns, given input.

This table lists what rules are laid down in the legislation and regulations, not what speed limits one may usually expect to be signed. (For the latter, check out Speed limits by country on Wikipedia.)

Hence, any change to this table requires a reference to the country's legislation, date when the legislation was last changed and a link to the legislation text for verifiability. Information from internationaldriversassociation.com, driving.com, similar websites and news articles is not useful as it often just lists the "usual" speed limit and often just for passenger cars. A legislation text that is directly published by an official source is better than from a 3rd party source because it is more likely to be most up-to-date.

For each road type mentioned in the "Max speeds by road type and vehicle type" table, there are tag rules specified in the "Road types to tag filters" table that define by which tags to identify the road type. The latter table has three columns: exact tag rules, fuzzy tag rules and tag rules of containing relation. The first should be able to identify the road type with certainty, the second is a good guess and the third is for identifying the road type by looking at the tags of the relation(s) the road is a member of.

The rules that define road types don't all have to be mutually exclusive, the tags on a road may match with several road types. In this case, the following algorithm is used to determine the road type: If the tags match with a road type specified in a row below the blank one (usually: rural roads), the bottom-most road type is selected. Otherwise, if the tags match with a road type specified above the blank one, the top-most road type is selected.

3a8082e126