Bulgaria and Romania are European leaders in the number of fatalities in road accidents in the EU, Brussels will introduce tighter road traffic measures.

The European Commission is planning to introduce stricter safety standards for new cars.

"In May I will present a number of measures to make road traffic safer," EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulц said in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt.

This is not about the mandatory use of different technical devices in new cars, in particular, automatic emergency braking systems, etc. The new measures have been developed following an analysis of the new road accident statistics that the EC presents today. The smallest victims in Sweden, the most - in Bulgaria In 2017, the number of road deaths in the EU decreased by 2% to 25.3 thousand, which corresponds to 49 deaths per million inhabitants.

''Despite the slight positive trend, these are generally horrific figures'', said Bulc. Brussels aims to reduce the number of road accident victims to 16,000 in 2020, which will be half as much as in 2010.

"Given the new data, it will be very difficult to achieve this goal," the EU commissioner said.

Last year, 3177 people died in Germany. Compared to the population, this makes 38 per million inhabitants dead. Even lower is the indicator in Sweden - 25 victims per million, the UK / 27 victims /, the Netherlands / 31 / and Denmark / 32 /. The highest mortality rates on the roads of Romania and Bulgaria are 98 and 96 victims per 1 million population respectively. The greatest number of fatal accidents (55%) occur on rural roads, only 8% on motorways. Another 37% of fatal accidents occur in cities.