Truck With Damaged Trailer and Flammable Cargo Stopped in Sofia.

Instead of stopping, the driver continued moving at a speed of 90 km/h.

At around 4:00 p. on June 28, during a patrol on Sofia’s ring road in the section near Tsarigradsko Shose Boulevard, a police team noticed a truck whose semi-trailer was moving unstably. Officers from the Economic Police Department at the Sofia Directorate of the Interior, the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, the Executive Agency Automobile Administration and the Customs Agency were called to the scene.

A representative of the Interior Ministry said analyses showed that most offenders and reckless drivers in Bulgaria connected with heavy goods transport were Turkish citizens and that more intensive work should be done with regard to them, including through international cooperation channels, to check the companies operating the trucks. He added that road safety is a problem, commitment and responsibility of many institutions, society and education, which is why the approach is comprehensive.

According to him, the practice of other countries that have achieved success shows that the share of the Interior Ministry and police services is 20–30%, while the remaining part up to 100% is the responsibility of many other institutions and organizations. In addition, we have analyzed our administrative penalty activity to see in what direction work has been done so far, and on the basis of these two analyses, in the first part we have made a new deployment and taken concrete actions, he said.

The examination of road accidents involving moderate or serious bodily injury and fatalities will no longer include only the motor vehicle and the driver, but also the road easement — guardrails, asphalt surface, the presence of billboards creating danger, and roadside vegetation. These circumstances will now be included in the inspection report in pre-trial proceedings. Additional measures have also been planned for the second part.