By the end of 2018 new methodology will be developed for testing psychological fitness of public transport drivers as well as those drivers with suspended license. This emerged from “Human factor in road safety” press conference, held today in Sofia. The event was organized by the Institute for Population and Human Studies to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences within the project “Enhancement of road safety by developing new methodologies to study psychological fitness of drivers”. The total amount of the project is 378 thousand leva, VAT excluding, and financing is provided under OP “Transport and Transport Infrastructure” 2014-2020.
Mrs. Galina Vassileva, Director of Coordination of Projects and Programs Directorate to MTITC, methodologies used to test new drivers have not been revised in the past 20 years and need to be updated urgently. She further added that securing road safety is among the Ministry’s priorities, and projects in that respect are financed under European funds. “The project aims at imposing stricter control on the assessment of the fitness of new professional drivers at an early stage, as well as at studying in depth their psychological fitness”, clarified Vassileva.
Zdravko Asparuhov, Head of Psychological Selection at EA Automobile Administration, pointed out that following the introduction of the new research methods, the exam time, which currently takes about 4 hours, will be reduced three times and criteria for psychological examinations of drivers will be made more rigid. He commented that after the completion of the project, there will be different versions of the exam to be randomly selected and will differ in various regions of the country. "As a result of the project, a risk driver profile will be drawn, which will allow us to take effective measures to improve road safety, legislative ones including, on the basis of the information we collect", said Asparuhov.