THE FEARS of people living in and around Langho after four serious accidents at a railway bridge in less than three months are not difficult to sympathise with.

They rightly point out that a disaster could happen on a road where schoolchildren walk and trucks seem to topple over with frightening regularity after attempting to go under a bridge far too low for their vehicle to clear.

The fact that the bridge carries a railway track and regular passenger services makes the potential for death and serious injury even more worrying.

For some years, Darwen Street in Blackburn has suffered a similar problem with the added nuisance that on such a busy, central route every such crash causes major traffic disruption.

When technology can produce missiles which can seek out a single house in the middle of a city it seems incredible that lorries are able to continue to attempt to drive under bridges that they are too high for.

Many roads in Britain and abroad have built in sensors which flash electronic 'slow down' signs after detecting that you are travelling too fast, for example, on the approach to a dangerous bend.

Some makes of cars can be bought already fitted with 'magic beams' which give you an audible guide so that you can in theory park safely between two cars without actually having to use your eyes!

With such gadgetry in common use a height disc stuck to the bridge, some chevrons and an advance warning four miles away add up to a totally inadequate warning system.

Years ago it took a number of deaths and awful accidents before our road and rail authorities got together to ensure that all level crossings were fitted with proper barriers, alarms and flashing lights.

When Lancashire County Council leader Coun Hazel Harding says "each case has to be judged on it's own merits" and there has to be investigation of the "number of accidents" that have taken place one could be forgiven for thinking that she means the pressure to act must become impossible to resist before cash is spent.

The case for immediate action is unarguable.