17-year-olds can get a driver's license , but to drive only with a companion until the age of majority. This is provided for by amendments to the road traffic law submitted to the National Assembly. The proposal caused mixed reactions.
According to the texts, the driving course can start not as now at 17 years and 9 months, but a year earlier. During the first 365 days, however, the young driver will only be able to drive with a companion who has at least 5 years of experience, has not had a driving ban in the last 2, and while with the new driver is not drunk or drugged. Among the new proposals are detection of average speed and reduction of the maximum speed on highways. And will the National Assembly have time to accept all this before it dissolves is a question that still has no answer.
Stefan is 18 years old, his instructor Dimitar has been in the profession for 45 years. Despite the age difference, they both share the same opinion.
"For me, they are too young because we are now training 18-year-olds and they don't have habits yet. Difficult, very difficult", said the instructor Dimitar Mishev.
Candidate-driver Stefan Stoyanov is against it, considering that people are still young at 17. "They have to be 18 to do the courses," he adds.
"You have to be constantly alert, whether it is calm or not, you have to constantly watch what is happening,", he is aware.
Exactly to make it safer on the road, experts from the non-governmental sector, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Transport have prepared the changes in the law. Among them - a lower speed on highways and the detection of average speed through API cameras. To turn from ideas into law, they need to go through seven parliamentary committees and two votes in the chamber.
"Since Bulgaria has been in a political crisis for the third year already, we have the sixth election in these three years, so the parliament still does not have enough time to adopt important changes," said Vladimir Todorov, chairman of the Association of Accident Victims.
According to him, this time too the amendments may be delayed. "We can prepare them for the next National Assembly, to enter them again, to insist that they be considered before the Transport Commission, and to be accepted as a matter of urgency, because otherwise, as you can see in terms of statistics, things have not changed," he commented he.
Until then, the maximum speed remains 140, instant speed cameras - the only method of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and licenses - after 18. The instructor Dimitar Mishev noted that conscientious parents do not let the child alone.