Bulgaria and the World Bank have been working together since last year to improve the road safety situation in Bulgaria. The Road Infrastructure Rehabilitation Project is a vehicle used to undertake this challenging task. Under this Project, a review carried out by the World Bank with support from the Global Road Safety Facility, and with close collaboration between various Government stakeholders, the World Bank’s Bulgaria transport team, and experts of the Danish firm COWI, laid down a clear diagnosis of the current situation, and presented to the Government various policy and institutional options as well as investment plans to improve road safety in the country. A national Workshop on Road Safety in Bulgaria, cosponsored by the Government and the World Bank, took place on December 10, 2007 in Sofia and focused on developing an Action Plan for implementing the National Road Safety Strategy. The event was opened by the Minister of Transport, and the World Bank’s Country Manager for Bulgaria. More than 60 participants from the Government, private sector, and civil society attended the workshop and developed the Action Plan.
The Current Situation
 Road safety is a very serious problem in Bulgaria. Each year nearly 1,000 people die and around 10,000 are injured in road accidents, and some may be disabled for the rest of their lives. This is equivalent to almost three fatalities per day due to road traffic crashes or to five plane crashes per year with medium sized passenger airplanes. With close to 125 road crash deaths per 1 million inhabitants, Bulgaria is approximately two to two and a half times above the best performing EU Member States and 10 to 12 percent above the EU average. Compared to the average of 11 new Member States (apart from Romania) Bulgaria is lower, however the level has not decreased over time in Bulgaria as it has in the other countries.
The approximate 5 percent average annual increase in road casualties (fatalities and injuries) during the last six years (2001-2006) attests to a dramatic worsening of road safety in Bulgaria. From 2000 – 2005, the number of fatalities has increased by approximately 3 percent while in comparison it has decreased in all the EU member states by more than 20 percent. The tendency is even more serious for the number of injuries, as these have increased by more than 27 percent from 2000 – 2005, and by 20 percent from 2003 – 2006 alone.
The large number of road traffic crashes and fatalities is also a growing burden for the health sector in Bulgaria as described in the alarming World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention which states that in many middle-income countries such as Bulgaria, the burden of traffic-related injuries is such that they represent between 30 and 86 percent of all trauma admissions.
Road traffic crashes entail considerable economic losses, making this a serious development problem as well as a human tragedy. Apart from the human losses these crashes now result in losses to the economy of a roughly estimated EUR 400 million per year based on 2005 figures. In just the six years period 2000-2005, there have been 5,842 deaths and over 52,000 injuries in road accidents resulting in estimated economic losses to the Bulgarian economy of over EUR 2 billion. Unless urgent and effective action is taken to reduce the annual toll of deaths and injuries such human and economic losses will continue into the future.
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