PM Denkov after the meeting on road safety issues: Measures should be taken to end any feeeling of impunity in driving offenders

The first thing that needs to happen is to fight any feelings of impunity in driving offenders, Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said at a briefing in the Council of Ministers on September 4. Measures should be sought to make offenders hurt, he said.

The Prime Minister made the statement after an emergency meeting on road safety at the Council of Ministers. In addition to the institutions involved in the issue, representatives of the Prosecutor's office, the National Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria, the Sofia Municipality, MPs and parents of those killed in accidents were also invited.

The Prime Minister pointed out that some of the changes are related to amendments to the law. The general opinion is that the changes related to the confiscation of vehicles are already bearing fruit, he said. PM Denkov noted that the meeting also discussed how to speed up the taking of samples when there are serious accidents.

"These amendments related to the confiscation of vehicles of drunk and drugged drivers, no matter how much criticism there was about them, are yielding results. That is why we need to look at measures that make offenders hurt - so that they know that if they commit offences, they can get an email after 5 minutes telling them that they will be fined. We have been discussing with the Ministry of Interior and the traffic police how we can work with the municipalities, and they have such suggestions, so that in an urban environment we can work with the authorities of the Ministry of Interior, use their cameras to help process the fines, and the resource of the municipalities' cameras can be used like in other countries. We discussed how to speed up the sampling. When there are serious accidents, the results from the samples should be clear within a week-10 days," said Nikolay Denkov, Prime Minister.

"There is no way a road death caused by alcohol, drugs or speeding should not be a premeditated murder. There is no way that a person who got behind the wheel with more than 2 promilles of alcohol, exceeded the speed limit, killed a person on a pedestrian crossing, this cannot be qualified as anything other than intentional homicide," said Kalin Stoyanov, Minister of the Interior.

PM convenes emergency meeting on road safety

With a minute of silence protesters honoured the memory of the boy killed on a pedestrian crossing in Sofia