As August and the peak of Bulgaria’s summer holiday season headed to an end, there were media reports of blood banks running dry and emergency ward surgeons being overstretched.
The reason? Once again, the festive feel of summer has been tempered by road deaths and injuries, most of them caused by speed and other reckless forms of driving.
On various days in July and August 2008, 24-hour periods saw up to three to four road deaths. To the finality of loss of life may be added the trauma of long-term injury and permanent disability from accidents, many of which could have been avoided by more sensible driving habits and proper policing.
A scan of media reports from this and summers immediately past makes it clear where Bulgaria’s high accident rate zones are. Officialdom is well aware of these zones, going by the signboards alongside some routes. Officialdom also knows the contributing factors, given that a traffic chief was quoted in early August as saying that dangerous overtaking was the cause of most accidents. It is legitimate to ask why, if these zones and known and traffic authorities are aware of the problem, more is not done against bad driving.
While, by fits and starts, Bulgaria is improving its highway network, a fact that theoretically should open the way for routes that have fewer potential risks than lesser, narrower and curving roads, it is also true that traffic is becoming more intense. The boom in lending in recent years and an apparent increase in incomes also has put more high-powered cars on the roads, although it is quite obvious that access to the finance for a car does not necessarily mean access to common sense about driving it properly.
Stoyan Tonev, head of Bulgaria’s Military Medical Academy, went on record towards the end of August as saying that those guilty of reckless driving should be sentenced to serve as assistants in hospital wards. There is some sense in this, given that failure by one arm of the Bulgarian state to do more about road safety in turn places additional pressure on the country’s already financially strapped healthcare system, and its emergency ward doctors and nurses in particular.
Bulgaria needs to take its cues from other countries in seeking to temper bad driving habits. It is clear that the time is overdue for public shock tactics to try to show people the potential consequences of using accelerators and steering wheels as gambling devices. Recent years have seen one or two attempts at rousing songs ahead of summer, noble if sadly futile attempts to encourage people to approach driving calmly and carefully.
For years, part of the problem that traffic law enforcement in Bulgaria has not worked properly is that it has tended to be static and predictable, with many drivers being well-versed in where to expect speed traps, and others only to keen to warn their fellow drivers where to slow down to an uncharacteristic crawl, long enough to pass the police. A much more dynamic law enforcement approach is needed, and if Bulgaria either can persuade the European Union to provide funds – probably a difficult enough task, at the moment – or attract private sponsorship, it should consider deploying “eye in the sky” traffic helicopters to catch offenders. Meanwhile, it is as well that new monitoring equipment is to come into use that, so we are promised, will catch out law enforcement officials who take bribes.
Most of all, motorists guilty of serious speeding, reckless driving and worst of all, causing death and injury, need to be seen to be having to pay the price in long-term jail time, onerous fines and of course, long-term or lifetime bans on driving.
For a country facing a worsening demographic crisis, Bulgaria seems quite content to allow its citizens to rush to kill themselves and each other on the roads.
