Highway “Thrakiya" is in first place in terms of accidents for the first 5 months of 2024. There is almost no section of the highway without bent or even missing guardrails. According to the data of the Ministry of the Interior, half of the accidents on the highways in our country occurred precisely there.
By May, 282 out of a total of 600 accidents had occurred. 57 people were injured and three died.
Since the beginning of summer, the highway has been one of the busiest and most dangerous road sections with the most serious accidents and serious traffic jams.
Only since the beginning of August, there have been more than 30 road accidents there, and the traffic jams – everyday life.
On August 12th, a chain accident and a kilometer-long queue formed shortly before Burgas, and on August 11th, another accident with injured people hindered traffic. The situation was similar for the previous three days. On August 6, due to a serious accident, traffic to Sofia was even blocked.
There is almost no section of the highway without bent or even missing guardrails, writes bTV. In order to ease the traffic in the event of accidents, in some countries they dismantle the guardrails so that cars can move in both directions in the oncoming traffic.
Is it possible to introduce such a measure in our country as well?
„It will not work in Bulgaria for several reasons – the bad driver culture, the poorly built infrastructure. You can see for yourself here how big the grass is. Thirdly, there is no investment in such systems. In general, if you do this thing without creating the right organization, you can cause much bigger catastrophes," said Diana Rusinova from the European Center for Transport Policies.
The road agency clarified that the incidents in recent weeks are not the fault of the infrastructure. They added that the dismantling of guardrails had been used before. "In recent road accidents, such a measure was not applied with a view to restoring traffic and the safety of travelers in the shortest possible time," the API states.
The road agency indicated that a road safety analysis of part of the highway was carried out in July and they have guidelines for easing traffic.
By number of incidents after AM “Thrace" the highway “Hemus" with 180 crashes and 32 injuries. There are over 100 traffic accidents on the "Struma" highway, 28 – of “Maritsa" and two on the “Black Sea" from January to May.