Traffic rules & parking zones in Belgrade

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We already established some foundation for the traffic in Belgrade. This post should cover a couple of more important things to know about driving or walking through Belgrade.

Driving rules

Standard things apply – fasten your seat belt at all times while driving. Make sure to have your lights/beams turned on, as the rule in Serbia is to have them on 24 hours per day.

Do not talk on your cell phone while driving.

You cannot make a right turn at the lights if there’s no green arrow that’s turned on. You need to wait for the green light.

Pedestrian rules

Again, the usual things apply. I just have to emphasise two things:

• Do not talk on your mobile while crossing the street, don’t even have both headphones in your ears. This is forbidden by law and a police officer might write you a ticket.
• Do not expect that vehicles will stop at the pedestrian crossing for you (we call the crossings “zebra” – the animal). This is one of the things that I really don’t like about driving culture in Belgrade but that’s how it is. Most of the people will stop, but huge portion will not so take precaution at look at both sides before crossing.

Parking & Towing

City center (but also some other parts of the city) are covered by parking zones. There are five zones in total

• Zone A (purple) – 30 min max parking
• Zone 1 (red) – 60 min max parking
• Zone 2 (yellow) – 120 min max parking
• Zone 3 (green) – 180 min max parking
• Zone 4 (blue) – no limit for parking

Newest thing city did was to introduce yet another half (in red) and a full hour (in other two zones) after the max limit has been reached. This is a more expensive option but also could come in handy.

Important: RED line doesn’t mean that it’s forbidden to park there. It’s just a way for a driver to know that red zone is in that area.

You can pay for the parking using SMS (only Serbian numbers work), by paying to the parking zones employee, by purchasing a ticket from the nearby kiosk or through a parking machine.

If you don’t pay for the parking spot, two things can happen – if you rented a car, so it has a Serbia licence, you will get a fine, which is somewhere around 20 to 25 eur based on the zone. If you have a car with a foreign licence plate, you tyre will be locked and you need to call “Parking Service” to unlock it (and you have to pay the fine, of course).

Pretty OK English version about the zones (minus the hideous Comic Sans font they used ?!) can be found HERE, so take a look.

You can easily know in which zone you are, even if there’s not a sign nearby (and it should be at the start of each street) by looking at the ground – next to the while line there’s also red, yellow, green, blue or purple – that’s your zone.

Towing

Do not park on the yellow lines, where it’s forbidden to park or where there’s no parking zone. Towing trucks with police inside are looming all around the city and it’s considered a luck if they don’t tow you away. Besides the fine, which is around 100 EUR I think, the bigger issue is to find where they took your car and how to get there.

There are garages around the city that you can park in – both from “Parking Service” but also from shopping malls etc so I suggest using those if you are unsure if it’s safe to park somewhere or not. Parking Service even has a handy tool at their website with currently available spots in every garage they own.