Fuel, vignettes and Slovak road rules, a first-timer’s primer

The Slovak road network is short, well-signed and easy to drive once you understand three quirks: the country uses an electronic vignette instead of toll booths, fuel grades are labelled the European way (not the British or American way), and a handful of road rules catch out almost every visitor. This guide walks through all three, with Poprad as the starting point.

The electronic vignette — how it works

Slovakia abolished its paper vignette stickers in 2016. Every motorway (Diaľnica, signed D-something) and every expressway (Rychlostná cesta, signed R-something) now uses an electronic vignette tied to your number plate. Gantry-mounted cameras read the plate as you drive past and check it against the national register run by the NDS (Národná diaľničná spoločnosť).

There are no toll booths. There is nothing to stick on the windscreen. If you have a vignette, you drive. If you do not, the camera flags the plate and a fine of around €100 appears in the post a few weeks later — sent to the registered keeper, which on a rental car means us, which means it ends up on your card.

On every EasyCar rental the annual vignette is included in the price. You can use the D1 motorway from the moment you collect the keys without thinking about it. Visitors driving out of Poprad to Bratislava, Žilina, Košice or the Polish border are covered for the whole route.

Driving into another country?

The Slovak vignette covers Slovak motorways only. The neighbours sell their own:

• Czechia — electronic, available online or at the first petrol station after the border. A 10-day pass is around €13.
• Austria — digital or physical sticker (your choice). A 10-day digital vignette costs around €11.
• Hungary — electronic only, around €15 for a 10-day pass.
• Poland — no general vignette. A few specific motorways have toll booths; the road from the Slovak border at Lysá Poľana to Kraków is free.

Fuel: what to ask for at the pump

Slovak forecourts label fuels by their European RON number rather than by colour or grade name. The four labels you will see are:

• Benzín 95 — standard unleaded petrol, what most rental petrol cars take. Around €1.55/litre in May 2026.
• Benzín 98 or 100 — premium unleaded, useful only for performance cars; about €0.20/litre more.
• Nafta — diesel. Around €1.45/litre. Do not confuse the word with the English “naphtha” — in Slovak nafta just means diesel.
• LPG — bottled gas, around €0.80/litre. Available at a minority of stations and only relevant if you specifically rent an LPG-converted car.

The four chains you will see most around Poprad are OMV, Slovnaft, Shell and the budget Lukoil. Visa and Mastercard work everywhere; American Express is rarely accepted; cash is always welcome. The 24-hour stations cluster along the D1; smaller village stations close by 22:00.

Self-service is standard: pump first, walk in, quote the pump number, pay. Many stations have unstaffed automated pumps active overnight; insert card, lift nozzle, pump up to a pre-authorised €100, take the receipt at the terminal.

Speed limits and lane discipline

The headline Slovak speed limits are simple and consistent with most of Continental Europe:

• 50 km/h inside any built-up area — from the white village name sign to the same sign barred through at the exit.
• 90 km/h on regular country roads outside towns.
• 110 km/h on expressways (the R-roads, signed in green).
• 130 km/h on motorways (D-roads, also green).

Speed cameras around Poprad are mostly static and clearly signposted; mobile police cameras occasionally appear on the D1 near Vrbové.

The rules that catch visitors out

Six Slovak road rules consistently surprise first-time visitors. None are obscure, but none are quite the same as the country you came from.

1. Headlights are mandatory all year, day and night

   Slovakia requires dipped headlights any time the car is in motion, even on a clear July afternoon. Modern rentals do this automatically; check the dial is on Auto and not O.

2. Zero alcohol tolerance

   The legal blood-alcohol limit is 0.00‰. No glass of wine with lunch. The police breathalyse routinely at weekends in Poprad and the resort villages, and the penalty starts at a €200 fine plus an immediate licence suspension.

3. You give way to the right at unmarked junctions

   In Poprad’s residential side streets and in the older parts of Tatranská Lomnica, many junctions have no signs at all. Slovak law says give way to the right by default. When in doubt, slow down and look both ways.

4. Children under 150 cm need an approved seat

   Booster cushions and full child seats are mandatory up to 150 cm height, in all seating positions. EasyCar rents seats from €3/day; add yours at booking.

5. Right-hand overtaking is illegal

   On the D1 and the R-roads you may not pass a slower vehicle on the right, even in flowing traffic. Move left, overtake, move back. The exception is dense urban traffic where lane discipline takes precedence.

6. Roundabout priority is sometimes reversed

   Most Slovak roundabouts give priority to traffic already on the circle. A handful in older town centres (including one in central Poprad near the railway station) still give priority to traffic entering the roundabout. Look for the inverted red triangle: if it is there, traffic on the roundabout yields to you.

Emergency numbers worth saving

• 112 — pan-European emergency, multilingual operator.
• 155 — ambulance.
• 158 — police.
• 150 — fire and rescue.
• 18 300 — Slovak Mountain Rescue (HZS) — the right call for any incident on a Tatras road or trail.

One small phrase that pays dividends at a petrol station: Plnú, prosím — literally “full, please”. Hand the cashier the pump number, the car key if asked, and they will fill it to the brim and bring the receipt.