According to the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Automobile and Motorcycle Club, there were 42,762 traffic accidents last year, killing 288 people. That’s 6,908 traffic accidents and 66 fatalities more than in 2024. We investigated the causes and what urgently needs to be changed.
As a nineteen-year-old, Dejan Trninić was seriously injured in a traffic accident. He says that instead of spending his youth with his friends and at school, he spent his time in the hospital and in rehabilitation. Today, he openly talks to students about his irresponsibility in traffic, which he paid for dearly. He wants to make young people aware that they should learn from his mistakes.
“I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, I was under the influence of alcohol, I was driving above the speed limit. I injured my spine and I had a difficult recovery period ahead of me,” says Trninić, director of the Association of Traffic Accident Victims “Step”.
Black statistics on the roads of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Twenty percent more traffic accidents and 30 percent more deaths last year than in 2024. On average, 117 traffic accidents every day.
The data from the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Automobile and Motorcycle Club on 228 deaths are an alarm that through adequate education, traffic safety, but also traffic culture, must be raised to a higher level. Authorities say that they will start with stricter criteria for taking driving exams, but also from the conditions for obtaining instructor certificates.
“Inadequate training for taking driving exams is often the cause of traffic accidents, even with fatal outcomes,” says Rasim Kadić, Secretary General of BIHAMK.
“We are changing by-laws that will tighten the process of obtaining a driver’s license. When you give a young person a vehicle, you have given them a weapon in their hands,” says BiH Minister of Communications and Transport Edin Forto.
The traffic safety expert states that speeding is the most common cause of traffic accidents, but also driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, using mobile phones while driving, and the condition and circumstances of the roads.
“Every second driver on the roads exceeds the speed limit, and outside settlements 80 percent of drivers exceed the speed limit. The priority is to amend or adopt a new Law on the Basics of Traffic Safety in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with increased repressive measures, because it has been shown that only a harsh punitive policy has an effect on our people,” warns traffic expert Nikola Ćopić.
Most drivers in traffic are treating their complexes and think that they are more important than other participants, believes psychologist Aleksandar Milić.
“A car is a place where aggression is transmitted. A low tolerance threshold in a vehicle has a certain charge, some complexes, that it wants to run over the person in front of it,” he says.
The recommendation of both psychologists and traffic experts is that children should be taught traffic culture, and irresponsible drivers, in addition to fines, should also be sent to additional training classes.
