The transport and communications ministry is building a digital hub to collect and analyse road safety data. Its first tool will direct checks to vehicles with a record of violations, the ministry said.

In first tests, mostly on transit traffic, road checks became 65-70% more effective.

The working groups on the reform met transport and communications minister Georgi Peev. They are in charge of its technology, legal and administrative parts. Peev said the digital hub is now taking concrete shape.

The tool will collect data on unpaid road tolls, overloaded lorries and violations found by the interior ministry, and pass it to the bodies that carry out checks. Work is at an early stage, but the system already holds data on vehicles passing through toll gantries.

Suitable sites for checks by interior ministry teams are also being chosen, and criteria to spot risky behaviour on the road are being drawn up. The data should show more precisely when tighter control is needed and improve coordination between agencies.

A test of automatic reading of data from lorry tachographs will start soon. A tachograph is a device that records a driver's working and rest time. Violations linked to it turn up in 15% of checks by the Automobile Administration executive agency.

The legal group is working on rules for driver training centres, and practical training on training grounds will be part of them. It must decide which laws will cover the centres, who will commission their construction, and how municipalities, not just the state, can build training grounds. The group is also looking at technical requirements for the sites and rules for buffer car parks.

"These issues have direct practical importance for how future drivers will be trained," Peev said. He added that centres, training grounds and buffer car parks also matter for traffic control on the roads.

The legal texts must be drafted by the end of the first quarter of 2027.

The Council of Ministers will adopt the road safety reform plan, prime minister Rumen Radev said in early September. Under the plan, a single national body, the Automobile Transport Operator executive agency, will be created from structures that already work.

The reform also provides for a single national centre for all road safety information. It will use the current toll system, data from municipal cameras, police body cameras and various sensors. Monitoring will run around the clock in real time, and different algorithms will process the data.

Road safety bodies, the Customs Agency, the National Revenue Agency, the toll authority, the emergency medical service, the air medical rescue system, the 112 emergency line and forestry staff will have access to the centre.