Drive with a Camera is the name of the latest civil initiative against road violators. The Bulgarian Association of Victims in Car Accidents is planning to equip cars of Bulgarian volunteers with cameras and publish the videos made by these citizens on its official Facebook page. The signals must be sent to the Bulgarian Traffic Police, so they can impose sanctions and fines to the violators. The initiative gained momentum and currently has over 5,000 followers in the social network. “If road hogs are not sure whether the cars in front of them or behind them are equipped with such recording device, or not, I believe that they will be more careful of the road”, Vladimir Todorov from the Bulgarian Association of Victims in Car Accidents told Radio Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Traffic Police support the idea and urges the volunteers to send contact information, their signals and videos.

The video campaign is definitely more sensible than the recent self-initiative of the Mayor of the town of Nova Zagora, who dusted the roads of the municipality with 50 kilograms of sugar, in order to get rid of bad luck and prevent heavy car accidents. “The initiative of Nova Zagora municipality is based on an ancient tradition”, Mayor Nikolay Grozev wrote in his statement.

The fight against car accidents in Bulgaria is uneven. Since the beginning of 2015 until now a total of 250 Bulgarians, including many children, died in car accidents. The reasons are well known for years: alcohol use, speeding, risky overtaking on dangerous road sections, etc. People who live in Bulgaria’s big cities witness almost on a daily basis cases when drivers cross on a red light signal, do not follow the right of way rule, or overtake other cars from their right side. Most road violations are accompanied with rude verbal attacks and threats. Let alone the cases when drivers park their vehicles in parks and sidewalks.

Just like in all other spheres of life in Bulgaria, people do not follow the rule of law and the level of control is very low. In this sense, Drive with a Camera initiative is another populist campaign, because the videos that show cases of road violations would not have legal weight in court, if a given trial is started, because the authorities do not accept videos of civilians as evidence. Moreover, such videos would not be accompanied by tickets against violators, because representatives of the Traffic Police do not witness the event. Apparently the national traffic police authorities are unable to deal with the situation, to control the road traffic and make drivers follow the road traffic ordinance. This campaign can not be described as an example of a functioning civil society, because the task of the civil society is to signal about problems and the institutions are the ones which have to solve existing problems, rather than letting people do their job. We can give one such example of how people violate the law: pedestrians from Bulgaria’s capital Sofia cross a large juncture nearby the Bulgarian National Radio on a red light signal every two minutes. In one hour only the Traffic Police could impose fines equaling the monthly salaries of two of its officers, without the use of camera.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov