ROAD planners in Hyndburn are upsetting motorists again.

They have been at their bossy best at upsetting them with their silly schemes -- the latest of which costs £50,000 and stretches all the way from Eastgate in Accrington town centre and up Manchester Road to the boundary with Rossendale.

The excuse for all this expenditure and fixtures such as bollards, white lines and cycle lanes, is, as ever, improving road safety.

But since the length of road involved is, by my reckoning, going on for four miles and the accident rate on it totals just 54 in five years over all that distance, it was hardly 'Apocalypse Now' to start with, was it? And it is, I think, worth asking whether the assumed safety gains outweigh the flaming nuisance and stupidity involved.

Prime among these are the so-called 'build-outs' that narrow the road precisely opposite bus stops. What happens when a bus stops to collect passengers or let them alight? -- it blocks the traffic lane completely, causing a jam of vehicles behind it and driving frustrated motorists in the queue to pull out and overtake in the lane for oncoming traffic. If you think that's an improvement or safe or sensible, then consider a career as a road engineer. Of course it's not -- but as a means of causing deliberate congestion it's what the we-know-best planners and their political bosses dictate that drivers must endure.

But what excuse do the green, anti-car advocates of such interference say about the extra pollution that residents are subjected to as held-up vehicles pump out exhaust fumes while stuck behind the buses? They may have a theoretically lower chance of being run over, but how many lives are being shortened by the lung-damage encouraged by the politically-correct traffic calmers who would probably have a fit if anyone lit a fag in their town hall offices?

Let's look at the other benefits they have brought once more to Hyndburn...cycle paths all of a dozen yards long that twist around these crazy build-outs and steer riders into the paths of cars; many residents deprived of parking places outside their homes; and cars now parked on pavements when, before, there was room to park on both sides of the road and for two lanes of traffic as well.