EU reports alarming trends for Bulgaria and Romania. | Photo: MZaplotnik, CC BY-SA 3.0

Bulgaria and Romania have the highest annual road fatality rates among all 28 EU member states, with 95 dead each for every million people, well above the EU average of 51.5 per million, the European Commission road safety report for 2015, released on Thursday, said.

Both countries witnessed an increase in road deaths compared to 2014, when they came second and third on the list, surpassed by Latvia.

The European Commission reported an annual growth in road deaths in Europe for the first time since 2001 with 26,000 people losing their lives in car accidents in 2015 as compared to 25,900 in 2014.

“Every death or serious injury is one too many. We have achieved impressive results in reducing road fatalities over the last decades but the current stagnation is alarming,” EU Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said.

For Bulgaria and Romania, the trends are even more alarming. Over the past few years, Bulgarian journalists and officials have been calling the deteriorating road safety situation “a war on the road”.

Despite media reports of tragic road accidents and despite government and NGO awareness campaigns, the number of deaths on the road keeps growing.

In 2015, the Bulgarian road police registered 7,225 serious car accidents with 708 deaths and 8,971 serious injuries.

Around a quarter, or 164, of the casualties involved pedestrians. In 96 per cent of cases the fault lay with the driver, Boyko Rainovski, head of Bulgarian traffic police, said on March 15.

“Last year, we lost [the equivalent of a ] whole school class, 26 people aged between six and 17. I think this is inadmissible,” Nastimir Ananiev, president of the parliamentary commission for transport, said on Tuesday.

He added that the highest numbers of road fatalities occur in July, August and September, when people are travelling for summer vacations.

Ananiev said Bulgaria was planning new legal measures to prevent road accidents, including higher traffic fines and sanctions and a new category for young drivers, who will not be allowed to drive fast cars for the first two years of their driving licences.

The other country on top of the EU ranking, Romania, blames the high rates of road fatalities on the poor skills of its drivers and the bad quality of the roads.

There were 9,369 roads accidents in Romania in 2015, causing 1,893 fatalities and resulting in around 9,000 severely injured people, according to Romanian police.

Romania remains among the most dangerous places to drive in the European Union in relation to the number of deaths.

Police data show that around 60 per cent of road accidents were the fault of drivers, with pedestrians responsible for only 29 per cent.

Drivers exceeding the speed limit and not respecting the rights of pedestrians were the two main causes of road accidents in recent years. Many other car accidents were caused by the poor state of the roads.