Your paper has written many times about our struggle towards establishing a pedestrian crossing for the interchange outside BHASVIC on Dyke Road.

I am a student at BHASVIC and have witnessed many "near misses". I challenge anyone, Brighton and Hove City Council official or not, to define that area as a low priority, let alone safe.

I freely admit students should be responsible for their own safety and perhaps aren't always the best group at doing so at 8.30 in the morning.

However, the local government system for allocating road safety improvements seems entirely disorientated and will appear shocking to many people.

Requests appear only to be accepted on statistical information, from a death or serious injury graded down to minor accidents.

This at first seems a fairly logical, if distasteful, system in that where accidents occur they are prevented from recurring.

However, the system, as with many government systems, seems to become ludicrous when no account is taken of context.

BHASVIC is a large college. There are young children crossing to go to school on a very busy road. Surely if a new school or college was built today there would be a crossing? No, students do not need a lollipop person coaching them across - just a point where all lights show red would help.

I spoke to someone the other day who mentioned the "bureaucratic stumbling block" of years we will now have to wait, all in order to save someone's life before they become part of council accident statistics.

Budgets I understand but not policies which restrict safety where it is long overdue.

Coming up to election time, ask your ward's councillor how long projects such as a Dyke Road crossing will take. I am sure they will be honest enough to give you a scary answer.

-James Freeman, BHASVIC co-Student Union president, Downside, Shoreham