More than 30 000 road accidents have been registered in Sofia municipality since the start of 2008, the deputy head of the Road Police Vanyo Stanevski said on October 13, the European Road Safety Day, which runs under the motto “For safe traffic in our city”. The number of serious incidents in Sofia since the start of the year was 1200, in which 94 people lost their lives.

For the country as a whole, the number of serious road accidents since the beginning of 2008 was 6265, taking the lives of 801 people and injuring 7829, according to the statistics kept by the Interior Ministry.

Stoevski said that the number of accidents decreased in comparison to 2007, but that should not be taken as a calming fact because "over the past three days, in Sofia alone there were 300 car accidents. There were 18 heavily injured and the lives of three people are in life danger,” he said as quoted by Focus news agency. Two thirds of the road accidents happened in cities, town or villages.

Sofia Traffic Police marked the European Road Safety Day by placing a crashed car by the side of Tsarigradsko Chausse Boulevard. Stoevski said that similar cars were put in place throughout Bulgaria to send a message to all drivers that the rights of drivers and pedestrians were equal.

Stoevski said that during the week of October 13-17, Sofia Traffic Police would check drivers for speeding, not respecting the right of way and alcohol abuse. Razgrad Traffic Control will also carry out massive checks for keeping the traffic rules in the town. The strictest checks would be in Isperih municipality, which alone accounted for about half of all incidents that involved children and pedestrians since the start of 2008, Bulgarian National Radio reported.