From today a working group has been formed in the Automobile Administration Agency to prepare changes in the rules for annual technical inspections of cars. We will propose to increase from 14 to 30 days the time limit for rectification of "significant deficiencies" found during technical inspections. This was said by Transport and Communications Minister Georgi Gvozdeykov during a visit to one of the Sofia checkpoints earlier today.
The other proposal put forward by the Minister is that vehicles that do not meet the permissible environmental standards should also fall into the category of "significant deficiencies", rather than being stopped from driving as is currently the case. "In this way, the owner of the car will be given a period of time to fix this problem, which in essence does not pose a direct danger to traffic on the road," Minister Gvozdeykov explained.
The emission limit values were introduced in Bulgaria in 2012 and implement a European directive. "What we have changed now is to tighten the control by connecting the measuring devices at the stations directly to the system of the Road Administration Authority and the data from each measurement is automatically received. Until now it was possible to correct this data manually at the stations. Now this is not possible", said Minister Georgi Gvozdeykov.
He presented statistics showing that 139,251 vehicles had passed a roadworthiness test in the two weeks before the QMS went live. There were 208 vehicles found to have significant faults and returned for rectification, and 32 vehicles failed inspection due to dangerous faultsfound.
Since 22 July, when the new system went live, again over a two-week period, 127,085cars have passed . The provisionally admitted are 1808 out of the total number and the non-admitted are 181.
"This data clearly shows that the number of returned cars is about 1% of the total and there is no chaos with the reviews. This 1% is the result of the functioning of the quality management and control system and shows that the system really works," the Transport Minister stressed.
