Protest in Varna over Crash: Delay in Safety Measures

Another protest was held in Varna, provoked by the serious traffic accident at the end of last year on Drin Street, in which two women were hit and killed on the sidewalk. The initiative is by Petar Stanev, who lost his grandmother and insisted on urgent measures to guarantee the safety of pedestrians.

At the beginning of the year, the municipal commission "Public Order, Security and Traffic Safety" decided to install safety bollards in critical places for pedestrians in the city and speed bumps. But there is no result.

Three months after the incident, the dangerous section is still not secured, says Petar Stanev, grandson of one of the deceased women. According to him, there are many risky places in the city.

Petar Stanev: "This is an inviolable zone, but it's only on paper. As you can see, in the very case there were no bollards, now there are also none. My requests are to give an exact deadline, dates and, above all, when my lawyers will get acquainted with the evidence collected so far."

Petar Stanev's lawyer claims that for three months the municipal administration has abdicated its powers.

Georgi Radkov, lawyer: "There is a voted budget, but the reasons for it not being able to be realized are purely technical. To get to this traffic accident, if there were correctly built safety systems, the result would most likely be a little lighter, we hope there would be no victims at all."

In a written statement, Varna Municipality responded that they are taking the provision of pedestrian safety extremely seriously. The installation of restrictive bollards on the sidewalks, which were also present at the time of the incident, is to prevent illegal parking. However, the installation of safety bollards is technically not possible due to the limited width of the sidewalk in the specific section. And since the intersection has traffic lights, according to the current regulations, the construction of artificial bumps is not provided for.