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’stroubles 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 inBulgaria, so the Transport Ministryis 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 theEU; 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 Martinovatold...Hopes are that infrastructure can be further improved through the regular series of independent road safety audits, to be carried out by theEuropean 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,ERFdirector of operationsFrancesco Falcosaid...Road infrastructure, clearly, was not the only reason for traffic accidents, according toValentin Panchev, state expert on road safety at theTransport Ministry.The most often mentioned causes of traffic accidents inBulgaria were driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and speeding, Focus quotedPanchev 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)
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