Križevci, Novi Marof and the D22 across the Prigorje hills

This is a road people use to avoid paying for a faster one. It links a motorway junction with an expressway junction across open country, and it carries the volume of a main route on the width of a local one.

What defines this road

The D22 runs 42.7 kilometres from Novi Marof, where it meets the D3 and the D24, to Sveti Ivan Žabno, where it ends at the D28. Its middle point is Križevci, which is also where it meets the D41 and where the D10 expressway has its junction. The route crosses two counties and passes the A4 motorway interchange at its northern end.

It sits between two faster roads. With a motorway junction at one end and an expressway junction at the other, the D22 collects the traffic that leaves both of them, including heavy vehicles taking a shorter line between them. The result is a mix that a two-lane road of this width was not laid out for.

A boundary worth stating: the area around the northern junction and the road east towards the Drava each have their own entry, as does the road running south from Sveti Ivan Žabno. This entry covers the middle: Križevci and the stretch on either side of it.

The damage patterns of this road

Overtaking on short straights. Queues form behind slow vehicles and clear on the few open sections, which is where head-on and side contact happens. The marks run at an angle across the front corner rather than along the flank, and that difference is what separates the two accounts.

Farm traffic and field entrances. Tractors and trailers join from unsurfaced tracks, bringing soil onto the carriageway. Loss of grip on a bend follows within minutes of that happening and the evidence is swept away within hours, so a photograph of the surface is worth more than one of the car.

Fog in the hollows. The road dips between low hills and the visibility can change over a single kilometre. Rear-end contact in these dips is a recurring pattern, and whether the vehicle in front was lit is usually the whole question.

What to do and where the vehicle gets seen

Record the place so a stranger could find it again: road number and direction, the nearest village sign or junction, plus the time. On a road with few landmarks between the towns this matters more than it sounds, and it also fixes which section of the route you were on.

If visibility was involved, photograph the road ahead and behind as well as the vehicles. Fog lifts within the hour and nobody can reconstruct it afterwards from a close-up of a damaged bumper taken the following week.

We come to the vehicle. Inspections here are normally arranged within one to two days, and vehicles usually wait in Križevci or towards the northern junction, depending on where recovery took them.

Frequently asked questions

A rear-end collision in fog on this road. What should be recorded?

Photograph the road ahead and behind from the driving position, not only the damage, and note the time. Whether the vehicle in front was lit and how far it was visible is usually the decisive question, and fog lifts long before anyone asks it.

Mud from a field entrance caused the car to slide on a bend.

Photograph the surface itself before anything is cleared, together with the entrance it came from. Road maintenance often removes it within hours, and after that the only remaining record is what you took at the scene.

Overtaking contact on one of the open stretches. What matters?

The angle and height of the mark, because a front corner contact during overtaking looks different from a side scrape while travelling parallel. Photograph both vehicles where they came to rest, before either is moved to clear the road.