More than BGN 147.5 million of the budget have been invested in the safety of the national roads in 2020. The amount includes the money for new guardrails, road signs and markings. The financing is 4 times more than in 2019, when about BGN 37 million were invested, and more than 6 times more than in 2018. Then about BGN 24 million were invested.
Since the beginning of this year, the renewal of road markings for BGN 11,760,000 or nearly 1744 km has been assigned. BGN 127,890,000 or 1,421 km of new guardrails have been invested in restraint systems. BGN 7,900,000 have been invested in road signs, which is about BGN 15,800.
We remind you that despite the invested funds, Bulgaria fell with three of its regions in the black ranking of Eurostat on road safety and the number of deaths in accidents. And although the statistics reflect the data from 2018, they are still very valid today. According to it, the North-West region is in fifth place in terms of the number of people who lost their lives per million population – 114.
Official data also show that in the analyzed year there were 1.23 million accidents with injuries in the EU. More than 23,000 people died. On average, this means that 52 people per million population in the EU lose their lives in a car accident. The top 10 roads with the most fatalities in a car accident include two more Bulgarian regions – the Southeast and Northeast, two Belgian provinces and two Romanian regions. The Southeast is in eighth place with 109 deaths per million population, and the Northeast is in ninth place with 108 deaths in accidents per million population.
At the end of 2019, the European Commission published a report on the number of people killed in road accidents throughout the European Union in 2018. More than 25,000 people died as a result of the accidents, the analyzes show. 96 people in Romania and 88 in Bulgaria – the two countries with the highest mortality – died per 1 million population in 2018. The report notes that these are the only two countries in which the number of victims exceeds 80 per 1 million.
