INFRASTRUCTURES * Bulgaria - Audit the roads, audit the traffic

The poor quality of the road infrastructure has been often blamed for the high number of traffic accidents

Sofia,Bulgaria -News agency Focus/The Sofia Echo, by Alex Bivol -18 Jul 2008: -- Bulgaria’s troubles with building new roads and repairing the existing ones are well documented and have been a target of intense media scrutiny for months. The poor quality of the road infrastructure has been often blamed for the high number of traffic accidents in Bulgaria, so the Transport Ministry is preparing a series of measures to fix that... The ministry’s main priorities to cut the number of road accidents include harmonising the basic rules of traffic safety, in line with the trend of setting up unified rules throughout the EU; improving the exchange of information with other EU member countries and implementation of good practices in terms of accident prevention; and improving controls on observance of rules regarding driving time, breaks and rests of drivers of vehicles for public transportation of passengers and cargo, Deputy Transport Minister Krassimira Martinova told... Hopes are that infrastructure can be further improved through the regular series of independent road safety audits, to be carried out by the European Union Road Federation (ERF) throughout the bloc’s 27 countries. Trained road engineers would look mainly for deficiencies in road marking and missing road signs, ERF director of operations Francesco Falco said... Road infrastructure, clearly, was not the only reason for traffic accidents, according to Valentin Panchev, state expert on road safety at the Transport Ministry. The most often mentioned causes of traffic accidents in Bulgaria were driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and speeding, Focus quoted Panchev as saying. More than 20 000 Bulgarians had had their driving licences revoked for breaching traffic regulations in 2007, he said... (Photo: ASSEN TONEV - DRIVE ME UP A WALL: Tunnels on Bulgarian highways are often shut down for maintenance or repairs, forcing traffic in both directions to go through the same passageway)