Allow me to tell you a little story. When I first settled in to my former village house about 15km from the heart of Veliko Turnovo, one of the joys of Bulgaria seemed to be the thrill of the open road. Let me explain. In Britain, if a car advertiser wants to persuade you that their model should be your car of choice, they often produce a TV commercial showing their car serenely driving along a deserted and invariably scenic road. The sun is shining, the driver looks relaxed and somewhere a bluebird is singing in a clean, pollution-free sky. The psychology at work here is simple to understand. In the gridlocked UK, it doesn't matter what type of car you drive, your driving experience is usually the same, and the reality is that you find yourself stuck in slow moving (or in the case of the M25 motorway, frequently stationary) traffic. Just one of millions of motorists enduring the hell on earth that is the British traffic system.

Advertisers desperately try to re-ignite the idea of "the joy of motoring". In the UK it will never happen.

For a while I thought I'd rediscovered that joy in Bulgaria. My journey from the house to Veliko Turnovo by car took about 15 minutes, on a largely deserted major road, meandering peacefully through some breathtaking scenery. Initially, the only thing to mar my joy were the ubiquitous police speed traps, dour-faced police over enthusiastically enforcing speed limits that I personally found to be ludicrously low. Sadly however, the more time I spend on Bulgarian roads, the more fearful I have become for my life.

No, it's not the fear of disappearing down a pothole so deep that it would swallow my car whole. I normally spot those while they're a distance away. The killer on Bulgarian roads goes by the name of Overtaking. I should have learnt of this killer much sooner… In my early days in Bulgaria, a Bulgarian friend of mine kindly agreed to lead me to Varna; I was to follow his car in my hire car. Nyama problemi (no problem), I thought... However, within 15 minutes of setting off, I was reduced to a quivering wreck of a man.

My friend seemed to have one simple philosophy of driving: if it's a Lada, Trabant or truck, overtake it. It didn't matter where or how you overtook it. Going up a hill, overtake, blind bend, overtake! I was forced to keep up with him; stupid macho pride would not let me wimp out and give up. But I confess that at some points I simply shut my eyes and held the accelerator to the floor!

I made it to Varna in one piece, God knows how. I was not only scared witless, I was perplexed. My friend was a sober, intelligent middle-aged businessman, not some boy racer, but on the journey he took risks that I personally considered absolutely suicidal.

It wasn't till a long time later that I decided I'd discovered the reason for his behaviour.

Anyway, time moves on and soon I was running up a fair amount of mileage on Bulgarian roads and getting the chance to see other drivers in action. To date, personal accidents have been few and minor, a smashed wing mirror as I swerved to avoid a pothole and almost hit a car coming around a blind bend at a rate of knots, and a burst tyre when I failed to swerve to avoid a pothole. I also managed to get mugged by some people driving a horse and cart while I was driving a 1.8i Vectra, but that's an (embarrassing) story for another day.

Gradually, I developed a theory as to why Bulgarians drove like they did. For those of you interested here it is:

Roads in Bulgaria are relatively empty, and I can only presume that, say even 10 short years ago, they were emptier still. This means that, statistically, if you overtook a Trabbie on a blind bend or hill, you were unlikely to meet oncoming traffic. Try that on a British road and statistically they'll be scraping you off of what's left of your windshield and pouring you into a coffin. So, thanks to empty Bulgarian roads, a certain driving style emerged. Unfortunately this style endures to this day, with Bulgarian drivers failing to take into account the rise in car ownership and the influx of hire-car driving tourists to this country.

Statistically the odds are changing; you're far more likely to meet someone coming in the opposite direction nowadays than in yesteryear. This was graphically brought home to me by two separate incidents. One day recently, while driving into Veliko Turnovo, I passed not one, but two horrific car crashes. To put this into perspective, in all my life in the UK I've never once driven past the scene of an obviously fatal car crash. Sure, I've seen dented fenders, even caved-in bonnets, but I've never passed two cars that have lost almost all of their front halves. I saw this twice in the space of 10 minutes on the Stara Zagora road from Veliko Turnovo. So clearly the result of head-on collisions. It literally made me shudder and has made me fearful of taking to the roads again on the basis that, and this is important, no matter how safely I drive, it only takes one idiot who thinks that statistically he's unlikely to meet me coming in the opposite direction as he overtakes a trabbie on a blind bend, for me to end up as road kill.

The second incident happened in the same week as the two car crashes I witnessed. The 26-year-old son of a very dear and close friend of mine was travelling in a friend's car when a truck driving on the wrong side of the road (presumably impatiently overtaking a Trabant) was in a head-on collision with my friend's son's car.
Miraculously he survived the crash, albeit with a broken leg, broken arm and multiple other injuries. His name is Ivo, and his mother, when she learnt that I planned to write this article, asked me to point out the following:

Those selfish/stupid/incompetent (delete where applicable) drivers who are still relying on statistics should stop and consider the full implications of their actions. Not only was her son almost killed, the results of his injuries affected his whole family. His mother had to be his caregiver, bathing him, feeding him, tending to his pain. Her health suffered as she spent many sleepless nights wondering "What if". What if he'd died, what if he'd been paralysed for life, what if the offending driver had had a little more patience and waited till he'd had a clear opportunity to overtake.

His poor mother was almost as much a victim of this accident as Ivo himself was.

Something must be done to end this madness. I'm not spouting empty rhetoric for the sake of dramatic effect. If Bulgarians' attitudes to driving are not changed, the death toll will mount, no doubt about it.

Bulgarian roads are set to get ever busier. The cards are stacked against those overtaking without first checking that their road is clear. I won't sit here and pontificate; I'm asking for action.

So, what can be done?

For starters, the EU will shortly be pumping billions of leva into the country. Can we please ask that a fair portion of this be spent on road safety (killing two birds with one stone, less road accidents equals less demand on the health services). Wider roads, passing lanes, safety barriers at overtaking hotspots. These are basics. There is always education - I believe the Government has already started a road safety campaign - but to refer back to my friend who led me on that hair-raising ride to Varna, he was not a stupid or reckless man, this was simply the way he was used to driving. He and people like him have got to be re-educated. The old ways of driving in Bulgaria are obsolete.

Another positive move can be made on the issuing of licences. I'm led to believe that a driving licence can be bought off of corrupt examiners. These examiners are lining their pockets while putting potential killers on the road. Any anti-corruption campaign in Bulgaria must take a wide-reaching stance.

Another potential aid to safety is the introduction of speed limiters on cars. It's an idea that has been toyed with in the UK (bizarrely, as the average speed of traffic in Britain is probably around 20mph on most roads). Perhaps Bulgaria could show innovation to the rest of Europe by being the first country to introduce speed limiters.

Whatever it takes, it is clear that something dramatic has to be done.

I have a request to make of you, dear reader: do not read this article, nod sagely and then forget about it. The Sofia Echo is read by movers and shakers, politicians, foreign embassies. If any of you are reading this and you can in anyway influence road safety in Bulgaria, I urge you to take action now, do something, because chances are, if you ever get into a car in Bulgaria, statistically you could end up as road kill.