SOFIA, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria rolled out average speed cameras on 22 sections of its national road network on Sunday in an effort to cut the country's road accidents, the National Toll Administration (NTA) has said.

In the first 11 hours of operation, 82,482 vehicles were monitored. Authorities detected 1,378 violations, or 1.67 percent of the total, including 1,256 cars and 122 trucks. The highest recorded speeds were 222 km/h for a car and 162 km/h for a truck, well above the legal motorway limits of 140 km/h and 90 km/h, respectively.

Under Bulgaria's Road Traffic Act, drivers exceeding the speed limit by more than 50 km/h face a minimum fine of 1,000 BGN (about 600 U.S. dollars) and a three-month driving ban.

The new control system calculates a vehicle's average speed between two checkpoints and forwards violations to the Ministry of Interior for sanctioning. The NTA said the network will expand from 22 sections now to 126 by year's end, covering around 1,200 km.

Bulgaria has long struggled with road safety. Interior Ministry data show 478 deaths and 9,054 injuries in 7,173 serious accidents so far in 2024, compared with 525 deaths and 9,101 injuries in 2023. According to Eurostat, Bulgaria and Romania recorded the highest road death rates in the EU last year, with 81 fatalities per million inhabitants.

In May, the government adopted 43 new road safety measures, including stricter technical inspections, securing 36 high-risk sections, and improving another 500 km of accident-prone roads. ■