The first idea that Bulgaria’s new Interior Minister Mihail Mikov had for improving the image of the ministry after its most recent corruption scandals was to increase police presence on the streets. This was Mikov’s way of decreasing the stress on people caused by heavy traffic. It was also supposed to improve road safety.
Perhaps Mikov did not know that his predecessor Roumen Petkov had already taken measures in that direction.
The evidence sits on Bulgaria’s roads, well visible to everyone. It is enough for any motorist to take the road from Sofia to Varna in order to see the increased presence of Traffic Police (KAT) cars, for example.
Such an increased police presence is something for which both the media and society have been hoping for years in the light of the hundreds of deadly car accidents that reckless drivers cause.
That is why police should be praised for putting more of their own on the roads and regarding Bulgaria’s traffic problems seriously. Especially because lack of funds and staff was one of the reasons that the police had given about why it could not increase police presence on the roads.
As it turns out, police chiefs have managed to wrangle themselves out of this situation with a smart move.
There are indeed KAT cars on the Sofia-Varna road every 20km, but the cars are plastic replicas of the real Traffic Police cars. And, as it turns out, those replicas are part of a campaign aimed at alerting people to the fact that “driving is not a game”.
It is yet another campaign telling people how bad it is to drive fast. At first, one is bit disappointed when realising that it was a trick to which he was subject by the police.
On second thought, one sees that the police could have a point. The image of a white car by the road kilometres ahead of you has always worked well to encourage drivers to lower their speed.
The police initiative is extremely useful because, next to the flashing lights warning system, motorists who use one road regularly get to know the exact positions of police cars.
So, in a way, it works. Or at least it works the first time. Though often underestimated by the police, motorists are people not without common sense.
After the first shock of seeing a police car “where it’s not supposed to be”, the motorist becomes aware that the cars are fakes.
Soon he realises that the replicas are affixed to billboards of the company that is the Traffic Police partner in the initiative. One could argue whether the company wanted free advertising or to help the public in its fight against reckless driving, but that’s another issue.
Next to that, the motorist sees that all the billboards are visible from far away, as are the cars affixed to them.
So it is not difficult for the motorist to figure out that one only need watch for the partner-billboards in order to distinguish a real KAT car from the fakes. The result is obvious.
One, of course, should not get carried away with this theory, because it would not take some ambitious traffic police officer long to place himself next to a billboard. Unfortunately, all billboards on the Sofia-Varna road seem to be claimed at the moment and if any policeman wanted to do that he probably would have to buy some advertising space for himself. And we all know that a public tender would have to be called, deadlines would have to be met, transparency achieved, etc.
Of course, the other sensible thing that the police could do is to start changing the replicas’ positions along the road to avoid drivers becoming used to them. But this probably depends on the contract the police has with the partner-company, and does not really consider practicality.
