For weeks in July we were bombarded with complaints from motorists who had to deal with the heavy traffic on the way from Sofia to the southern Black Sea.

The biggest challenge is a small ring road called Petoluchkata (the five rays), a few kilometres east from Sliven on the Sofia-Bourgas road where five roads meet. It takes just one minor accident or even a flat tyre for the chaos to start, leaving hundreds of people nervously creeping along, sometimes at just 10km/h, under the heat of the sun.

Petoluchkata has existed for decades as has the heavy summer traffic caused by holidaymakers. What was lacking – until a few days ago – was the presence of those paid to be on the road and not behind their desks, i.e. traffic police officers. If two vehicles are engaged in some kind of a collision, for example, their drivers would only move them away from the road when the traffic police arrives.

This happens because insurers only recognise one side’s liability in an accident and subsequently pay money to their client only if a catalogue of the event has been verified by police. The problem is that you can wait for hours for police to arrive, paying little sympathy to the kilometre-long line of vehicles forming after the accident.

Fortunately, this year’s summer season started the day after the new government was formed and the issue was taken seriously. The media also helped. One of the mass circulation dailies ran the following front-page lead: "What do we need traffic police for when they can’t handle a traffic problem?" Pushed by their new bosses and public opinion, traffic police chiefs started appearing on the road personally, inspecting the work of dozens of police units despatched to troublesome areas.

Aided by local mayors, police chiefs started working out alternative routes that bypass the heated zone. So it is that Petoluchkata zone can now be passed with almost no traffic delays, manned by police units every 10 or 15 kilometres. This is enough to deter reckless drivers from attempting risky overtaking and so bring a sense of security to the rest on the road.

Now, when something happens on the road,  police on motorbikes are ready to respond in the matter of minutes. This was unthinkable just a year ago.

All of this raises the following question: Why does it take a change of government for the local police to start doing its job properly? The summer season only lasts a couple of months and it doesn’t take that much effort for police to cover the area, particularly during weekends when traffic is more intense. It obviously can be done when there is political will and public pressure applied to public servants - which is what the police are.

Now all we have to do is start using this productive combination elsewhere such as the turn near Ropotamo river on the road between Sozopol and Lozenets on the Black Sea coast. The turn became famous when two-time world ice skating champion Maxim Staviski caused a road accident in 2007, killing one person and injuring another.

A few days ago, another reckless driver killed a young woman and injured another on the same spot. Traffic police responded that they had given the state National Road Infrastructure Agency a list with places that had to be repaired for safety reasons, but that a lack of funds had stalled works. The other thing police said it would do is to install cameras on the road.