# Romania's Road Black Spots In 2012, Romania's traffic police published the only detailed inventory of the road kilometers where serious crashes kept recurring, year after year. The worst 19 of them killed 170 people in five years. More than a third of those deaths clustered in a single county, the one ringing the capital. **In brief:** 170 deaths at the worst 19 spots (2007–2012); 7 of the 19 sit in a single county, Ilfov; Romania recorded 78 deaths per million inhabitants in 2024, the EU's highest rate. ## Where the crashes kept recurring Each point is a one-kilometer stretch of road where, within five years, at least 10 serious crashes caused at least 10 deaths or serious injuries: the official definition of a "black spot." **Seven of the 19 worst points sit in Ilfov**, the county that rings Bucharest: Bragadiru and Bulgaru on DN6, Afumați on DN2, Ciolpani Forest and Săftica on DN1, plus a stretch of the A1 motorway near Chiajna. Together they killed 67 people in five years, on crowded approach roads into the capital that had no median barrier at the time of the inventory. ## A simple definition, an old map A "black spot" isn't a journalistic phrase. It's an official category: a one-kilometer road segment where, over five consecutive years, at least 10 serious crashes occurred, causing at least 10 deaths or serious injuries. Romania's traffic police identify these segments by running kernel-density analysis, the same GIS technique used to find disease hotspots on a map, over the national crash registry. The last inventory made public in full detail, with exact kilometer markers, dates to 2012: 138 black spots nationwide, responsible for 1,517 serious crashes, 569 deaths, and 1,369 serious injuries in just five years. DN1 alone, the road linking Bucharest to Ploiești, Brașov, Sibiu, and Cluj, held 37 of them, with 157 deaths; DN2, toward Buzău and onward to Ukraine, held 21 more, with 90 deaths. Since then, CNAIR and the traffic police have kept updating the list: a 2026 statement mentions dozens of newly monitored sectors. But neither has published anything as detailed again, with a kilometer range and a death toll for each individual point. The 19 points below, the deadliest from the 2012 list, remain the most precise public picture we have of where these crashes actually cluster. That geography isn't scattered at random. Veștem, on DN1 near Sibiu, gathered 15 deaths in ten crashes, on one curve, in one kilometer. But the densest cluster sits right at Bucharest's gates: across a handful of kilometers on DN6 near Bragadiru, on DN2 before Afumați, on DN1 through Ciolpani Forest, and on the A1 motorway near Chiajna, seven separate points added up to 67 deaths: the signature of high-traffic approach roads built for a much smaller city than today's Bucharest. ## What has changed since Since 2022, through the EU's recovery fund (PNRR), CNAIR has allocated more than one billion lei to road safety: exactly 1,000,000,239 lei, by the company's own count. The money paid for close to 130 traffic-calming systems at locality entrances, roughly 100 million lei worth of lit, detection-equipped pedestrian crossings, roundabouts, elevated crossings with lifts and escalators, and kilometers of median barrier, concentrated on DN1 and DN2, the roads CNAIR itself now calls the most dangerous under its management. The claimed result: a 42% drop in the number of victims of serious crashes, over the past five years, at the monitored black spots. Today's list has also grown geographically. Four sectors in Cluj county (Luna, on DN15; Florești and Gilău, on DN1 toward Oradea; Fundătura, on DN1C toward Dej) recently joined the PNRR intervention list, a sign the program has reached well beyond the Bucharest–Ploiești corridor that dominated the 2012 inventory. The progress is real, but it started from a very high base. In 2024, Romania recorded 78 road deaths per million inhabitants, the highest rate in the European Union and nearly double the EU average of 44. In 2025 that figure fell to 68 per million, down 12% year-on-year, but still second-highest in the EU, behind Bulgaria. The kilometers that were killing in 2012 aren't necessarily the same ones today; the fact that the country stays at the top of this ranking, year after year, shows the problem has stayed just as large, even as its geography has shifted. ## What the data show, briefly - **170 deaths** at the worst 19 spots, more than a quarter of the entire 2012 list's toll. - **9 roads** (DN1, DN2, DN3, DN6, DN7, DN11, DN21, A1) hold all 19 points, a sign the problem sits with whole corridors, not isolated crashes. - **4 new sectors**, in Cluj county, show the PNRR program has expanded beyond the corridor that dominated in 2012. ## All 23 points | Category | Road | Km | County | Locality | Deaths | Accidents | Seriously injured | Period | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 297–298 | Sibiu | Veștem | 15 | 10 | 5 | March 2007 – March 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN6 | 12–13 | Ilfov | Bragadiru | 14 | 22 | 17 | May 2008 – May 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN2 | 15–16 | Ilfov | Afumați | 12 | 17 | 9 | January 2007 – January 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN6 | 256–257 | Dolj | Răcarii de Jos (near Filiași) | 11 | 10 | 8 | April 2007 – April 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN7 | 394–395 | Hunedoara | Mintia (Deva exit) | 10 | 11 | 11 | July 2007 – July 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 31–32 | Ilfov | Ciolpani Forest | 10 | 10 | 16 | January 2007 – January 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 327–328 | Sibiu | Săcel | 9 | 10 | 13 | February 2007 – February 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN6 | 14–15 | Ilfov | Bulgaru | 8 | 13 | 14 | July 2007 – July 2012 | | 2012 inventory | A1 | 10–11 | Ilfov | near Chiajna | 8 | 10 | 3 | May 2007 – May 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 25–26 | Ilfov | between Săftica and Tâncăbești | 8 | 10 | 6 | February 2007 – February 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 305–306 | Sibiu | Sibiu approach | 8 | 10 | 11 | June 2007 – June 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN3 | 252–253 | Constanța | Valu lui Traian | 8 | 10 | 4 | April 2007 – April 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 44–45 | Prahova | Puchenii Moșneni | 7 | 15 | 16 | June 2007 – June 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 67–68 | Prahova | Păulești forest | 7 | 14 | 12 | April 2007 – April 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN21 | 2–3 | Brăila | Vărsătura exit | 7 | 13 | 10 | July 2007 – July 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN6 | 9–10 | Ilfov | Bragadiru approach | 7 | 13 | 7 | November 2006 – November 2011 | | 2012 inventory | DN2 | 106–107 | Buzău | Buzău approach, Crâng forest | 7 | 12 | 10 | July 2007 – July 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN1 | 66–67 | Prahova | Ploiești exit, toward Metro | 7 | 11 | 11 | May 2007 – May 2012 | | 2012 inventory | DN11 | 7–8 | Brașov | Hărman | 7 | 10 | 4 | July 2007 – July 2012 | | 2026 PNRR intervention | DN15 | 12+432–15+670 | Cluj | Luna | — | — | — | — | | 2026 PNRR intervention | DN1 | 481+800–487+504 | Cluj | Florești | — | — | — | — | | 2026 PNRR intervention | DN1 | 491+431–496+086 | Cluj | Gilău | — | — | — | — | | 2026 PNRR intervention | DN1C | 30+150–33+123 | Cluj | Fundătura | — | — | — | — | Download the full dataset: [CSV](/puncte-negre/assets/puncte-negre.csv) · [GeoJSON](/puncte-negre/assets/puncte-negre.geojson). Both files have WGS84 coordinates, for road designers, road-safety organizations, or contributors to navigation maps. ## How to read the map The 19 points from the 2012 inventory are the deadliest entries from an official list of 138, published by Romania's traffic police based on 2007–2012 crash data; each figure's exact source is checked separately. Each point sits on the locality named by the source, not the exact kilometer post, because no public register links CNAIR's official kilometer markers to GPS coordinates. One point from the original list of 20, near Iași, was dropped because the locality the source named ("Zorile") could not be identified on any current map. Crash causes are not assigned to individual points except where a source explicitly ties one to that location. --- A project by Marius Comper · [mariuscomper.uk](https://mariuscomper.uk/)