NO-ONE would permit pedestrians to cross a busy motorway - because it would be lethal madness.

Yet in East Lancashire the Highways Agency lets this sort of danger go on daily - all for the sake of the £250,000 that it could cost for footbridge so people would no longer have to walk across the high-speed Haslingden by-pass.

The Agency says it would be a waste of money when only 31 people a day cross the road on foot and when there has not been a fatal accident since 1986.

This is hardly surprising.

This road links two motorways and is virtually a motorway itself, with traffic tearing along it at 70 mph and more.

People are too scared to cross.

They go by car instead, when they would walk if there was a bridge.

This mean-minded outlook by the agency perpetuates that folly and a danger that remains real no matter how they try to minimise it.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.