Coffins Per Million
In Bulgaria, we have coined a phenomenon “War on the roads”. A war. What war? War implies chaos, inevitability, an enemy beyond control. War suggests that casualties are the tragic but unavoidable cost of a conflict. So what kind of war produces the same pattern every year? What kind of war claims lives and still manages to surprise no one? When death occurs with a mathematical regularity, it is not war. It is governance on display.
According to official data published by Bulgaria’s Ministry of Interior Traffic Police, 2025 recorded 456 fatalities and 8,295 injured resulting from 6,655 serious traffic accidents. For 2024, the European Parliament reports that Bulgaria recorded 74 road deaths per million inhabitants. In statistical terms, if the country has just under seven million people, it means that roughly 500 people were killed, which is about 1.5 deaths per day, more than ten deaths every week—the equivalent of wiping out a small village in a year. The problem is that each unit in this calculation represents a real person, not a mere percentage point. While reported figures for January 2026 vary slightly across sources, they converge around approximately 30 fatalities for the month.
The reality is morbid. Another crash. Another candle taped to metal. Another televised empty promise. Another unfair trial. Another collective outrage. And silence again until next time.
Umbrellas and Gold Bars
The road does not bend on its own—it is made to bend by a law that looks away and a corruption that looks back.
In 2025, Transparency International released their Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), with Bulgaria receiving an overall score of 40/100 points for the perceived level of public sector corruption, and a rank of 84/182 points globally.
The 2024 European Commission’s country profile on “Mobility and Transport” for Bulgaria reveals a troubling series of regulatory choices that are difficult to reconcile. It is challenging to call this bad luck when Bulgaria combines the highest EU motorway speed limit (140 km/h), apart from Germany’s unrestricted sections, with the comparatively lenient alcohol thresholds for professional drivers. The country’s road infrastructure is marked by low density, partial auditing requirements for new roads, no systematic inspections or star rating of existing roads, and no dedicated investments to upgrade high-risk locations.
Did you know that there are potholes large enough to swallow tires and tear through suspension? Or crooked asphalt that warps within months of construction? Or missing markings, faded signs, poorly lit pedestrian crossings? Killer roads, that’s what they call them. In 2018, in the aftermath of the fatal crash near Svoge, which claimed 20 lives, official documentation revealed that critical safety deficiencies had been identified in advance. The road section lacked proper drainage infrastructure, significantly increasing the risk of loss of control during heavy rainfall—precisely the conditions under which the crash occurred. No pedestrian console had been constructed, effectively forcing people to walk on the carriageway itself. In 2021, on the “Struma” highway, a bus self-crashed, catching fire, resulting in the loss of life of 45 North Macedonians, 12 of them children. This highway is widely regarded as one of the high-risk corridors in the country. In 2025, new information surfaced. The Bulgarian court acknowledged that the Road Infrastructure Agency bore responsibility but assigned it only 10% liability. The ruling established that the section lacked proper certification for final approval of use, had defective rumble strip markings, and failed to meet geometric design standards. Despite the documented deficiencies, accountability largely narrowed to the deceased driver.
In 2021, Deutsche Welle published an investigative report titled “Cash in Bags: Exposing the Hemus Motorway Scandal”, revealing a system in which billions were advanced through opaque subcontracting chains, with funds moving faster than the construction itself. Large cash withdrawals, limited transparency, and unfinished or delayed sections raised serious concerns about oversight. The bottom line is that in a country already struggling with high road mortality, corruption in infrastructure is not abstract mismanagement. It is a safety hazard sealed into the foundation.
Licensed to Drink, Licensed to Drive
In Bulgaria, the permitted level for Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) for standard drivers is 0.5 g/l. Regarding narcotics, Bulgarian law enforces a strict zero-tolerance policy. In July 2022, in the city of Sofia, a driver caused a fatal car crash, colliding first with a taxi and then with the elevator structure leading to a nearby metro station with the SUV splitting in two. Two young pedestrian women were killed, but the driver managed to flee the scene. Only 12 hours later, he was apprehended at his home, with information revealing that a policewoman helped him hide. He had been driving a vehicle equipped with fake registration plates, over 160 km/h, without a valid driver’s license and under the influence of narcotics. About a month before the crash, he was caught driving after using metamphetamines, but he managed to flee and was never detained. In September 2022, at Sofia’s Ring Road, а Porsche driver crashed with over 190 km/h into the car of two French citizens. One was killed instantly and the other was left in critical condition. He was found to have over 1.7g/l BAC and positive results for cocaine. In 2023, a 15 year old boy was run over by a drunk driver with 2.0 g/l on a pedestrian crossing in central Sofia. These examples are only a fraction of reality.
Perhaps, the most corrosive element is judicial inconsistency. High-profile cases periodically ignite public anger. This is particularly the case in instances where drivers have prior violations of killing pedestrians, sentences are perceived as lenient, or procedural delays stretch endlessly. For families and for survivors left permanently disabled, the process often becomes a second trauma. Grief is followed by years of hearings, appeals, technicalities, and uncertainty. Justice, if it arrives at all, arrives delayed and diminished. And when people lose faith that the system will protect them, the temptation to seek their own version of accountability grows.
No One’s Hands Are Clean
Even a flawless road cannot neutralise a reckless hand on the wheel. “Accidents” happen. Yet accidents do not drink. Accidents do not take drugs. Accidents do not accumulate violations. Accidents do not bribe. People do. And a system allows them to. What is more, a press that relies on state funds cannot easily confront the state that funds it. Financial dependence breeds editorial caution. And editorial caution protects power. However, responsibility does not end with the state. It extends into households. When high-horsepower cars are handed over as a symbol of status, when speed becomes a graduation gift, when wealth is mistaken for maturity, when negligence is dressed as pride, the risk is not accidental—it is introduced. Teach your children that speed is not success and that horsepower is not identity. My Bulgaria was not meant to be an ouroboros of pain and guilt. We pretend the cycle will spare us. That it belongs to someone else’s headline, but it doesn’t. We’re all here on borrowed time.
Written by Valerie Schicke, Edited by Yoana Kartova.
Photo Credits: GDJ (2021, June 8) on Pixabay.
