1000 leva fine and the withdrawal of the driver's license for 3 months. This is the penalty if you drive in the emergency lane. However, there is no more suitable place than this lane to drive if you are driving along the first kilometers of the "Hemus" highway. The potholes there are so frequent and so large that many drivers, especially truck drivers, drive in the emergency lane.
During the week, bTV presenter Mityo Marinov and former traffic police chief Tencho Tenchev took a walk along the "Hemus" highway to count the potholes on it.
The first violation they detected was a truck that overtook them in the emergency lane – at the beginning of the "Hemus" highway in the direction of Sofia - Varna.
Then a car with a foreign registration, which also passes in the emergency lane to avoid the many bumps on the highway.
The car of Mityo Marinov and Tencho Tenev is moving at a low speed for the highway - about 85 km/h, and is constantly bouncing because of the potholes.
Near the village of Eleshnitsa, they come across an unregulated exit and entrance to the highway - without signs, without markings and without safety devices.
Only a few minutes later, a car of the state company "Automagistrali" leaves it with the inscription "Automagistrali - the road to the future" in a visibly very poor technical condition.
The team heads back to Sofia and finds that the potholes are even more, within 5 minutes they come across 3 trucks driving in the emergency lane.
In the last kilometers to Sofia, the number of potholes is 23 within 1 kilometer.
This is what part of the main road that connects the capital with large cities such as Varna and Ruse looks like.
The RIA's response to the condition of the road:
The “Road Infrastructure“ Agency is preparing preventive repairs to sections of the “Hemus“ motorway in the Sofia region - from km 0 to km 13, from km 20 to km 21, from km 23 to km 32, from the “Echemishka“ tunnel (42nd km) to the "Botevgrad" (46th km) motorway, between the facilities at 33rd km, 34th km and 36th km, in a section with a concentration of road accidents from 64th to 66th km. It is planned to begin the repair work towards the end of September, after the end of the active summer season, so as not to hinder the travel of citizens during the summer holidays.
The response of the RIA to the unregulated exit to the village of Eleshnitsa:
The service connection does not have the status of a road connection and does not meet the criteria for such, according to the regulatory requirements and cannot be used as a connection for public use. The road markings on the motorway in the area are continuous, there is no speed sluice and entry to the connection is unregulated. Road signs prohibiting the use of the service connection have been placed repeatedly and removed by unscrupulous citizens. Their restoration will be commissioned again in the near future.