18-year-old created “Black Track” - a map of accidents in Bulgaria. Martin Atanasov's idea came after the death of 12-year-old Siyana. “Black Track“ illustrates systemic problems on the roads throughout the country and how they are related to nearly 180,000 accidents over the last 4 years.
“The reason that not only in me, but also in many people, triggered the desire to pay attention to road safety – was Siyana's death. That's how I created the project, which has been public since Thursday and many people have already used it," Atanasov told "Hello, Bulgaria."
He explained that the map is interactive. It marks all road accidents in Bulgaria from 2021 to April 2025 with red dots. The idea of the map is to draw attention to the fact that the problem on the roads is not only in certain places, it is not only on highways - it happens everywhere and everywhere, claims the creator of the project.
According to him, the data was obtained from the "Traffic Police" through an official channel. "In the beginning, the idea of the project was to visualize the accidents. Under the places with a concentration of road accidents, there should have been information about how long ago the road was last repaired. This information should come from the RIA, since it maintains the road infrastructure. But my application for access to this information was denied because they replied that "This is too much work". That is why I am currently appealing this response, which I think is frivolous", Atanasov emphasized.
The young man said that the creation of the map took a month and a half. The platform is working and is available to all interested parties - both citizens and institutions.
“Black Track” allows filtering by various indicators – by type of accident, a specific year, a specific date, as well as incidents with injuries or fatalities. With the support of PR Agency “Yanev and Yanev”, Esri Bulgaria and ICDSoft, the platform is now online and available at www.chernapista.com.