Romanian who built one-meter highway to protest poor infrastructure prepares film about RO’s deadly roads

Romanian entrepreneur Stefan Mandachi, who built and inaugurated in March a one-meter highway to protest the lack of modern road infrastructure in the region of Moldova, is now working on a new project: a documentary about the deadly accidents on Romania’s roads, local Stirileprotv.ro reported.

Mandachi announced the project on his Facebook page, and said that the documentary will focus on several themes, such as “the tragedies that have happened repeatedly in Romania for 30 years due to road accidents and the lack of interest from those who have led Romania,” “the Romanians’ comfort and indifference,” “the importance of a small ant step for an entire country,” and “the corruption and politics that contaminate people's courage.”

Politicians, entrepreneurs, athletes, journalists, doctors, policemen and other people from varied areas of activity will also be interviewed for this project, the Romanian entrepreneur also said.

“I will travel a lot through Romania starting with my beloved Bucovina and I will take my message to as many Romanians as possible,” Mandachi said in his Facebook post.

“I’m waiting for suggestions from you. I'm interested in the testimony of people who have lost loved ones in road accidents or destroyed their lives because of disastrous roads. I look forward to other ideas from you about people, victims, locations, events, incidents, deaths, nerves, absurd situations, which I'm sure many of you are confronted with.”

Stefan Mandachi, who owns one of the biggest fast food chains in Romania – Spartan, launched the Romania vrea autostrazi (Romania wants highways) campaign, which aims to draw attention to the poor road infrastructure in Romania, which is one of the main causes for the high number of people losing their lives on the country’s roads. The campaign also has a hashtag used on social media: #sieu (which translates as me too).

Mandachi printed thousands of posters with the Romania vrea autostrazi message and distributed them across the country, and then decided to find another way of protest, and thus he built a one-meter highway near Suceava, which he inaugurated on March 15, at 15:00. The inauguration came with the call to stop work or any other activity for 15 minutes at 15:00 on March 15 and many Romanians and companies joined the protest.