04.09.2023
A sense of being untouchable has pervaded our entire system. The first task of the government is to eradicate it so that all potential killers on the road be aware that the punishment for what they have done will be inevitable, swift and harsh.
It was the ambition on which Prime Minister Acad. Nikolai Denkov and the members of the institutions who today met with parents of people killed in accidents agreed. The discussion was attended by MP Nastimir Ananiev, by the Ministers of Interior, Regional Development and Public Works and Youth and Sports, members of the Ministry of Transport and Communications and of other governments institutions: Silvia Georgieva, Executive Director of the National Association of the Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria; Yordanka Fandakova, Mayor of the Capital City of Sofia; and Georgi Georgiev, Chair of the Sofia Municipal Council. The participants discussed specific measures to make sure that lawbreakers would be quickly and effectively fined, that the investigations into road accidents would not take months, that drivers who have killed or injured people as they violated traffic rules would not be spared with a suspended sentence and that the courts would not protract for years the hearing of cases involving grave accidents.
Crimes committed by drivers who drive after drinking alcohol or taking drugs and serious offenses as they exceed the speed limit or disregard the privilege for pedestrians at a marked crosswalk should be determined as premeditated crime. The slips that certify a violation should be served electronically within a few minutes; the fines should be increased and collected quickly. The people in a vehicle who know that their driver is drunk or intoxicated should face charges, just as the driver does. The Ministry of Interior should be free to access the thousands of municipal surveillance cameras and the toll system cameras nationwide in order to be able to enforce sanctions on the basis of what they have recorded. These are just some of the measures that the government will take to minimize deaths on the road.
Some of these measures require changes in the legislation for which a vote in Parliament will be needed. Other measures will be taken by the Executive and the municipal authorities such as the safety of accident-prone road sections, and the speedier surveys for the indictments that involve road accidents to be brought to court.
The recent measure to confiscate the cars of drivers who drive after drinking alcohol and taking drugs works efficiently and will remain, Minister of Interior Kalin Stoyanov said. “From the very first days the government has worked against the lawbreakers on the road. It will not be a one-off campaign. On the contrary, we will expand it,” the Prime Minister said. He thanked the parents who have lost their children in road accidents for summoning courage despite their grief to fight to change the system so as to save the lives of other children. Acad. Nikolai Denkov called on the media and the public in general to support the government in its effort to end the road outrages.
