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And how they journey to and from school is obviously one of them.

A story in today's Free Press highlights this problem.

A catchment area of any given high school within Denbighshire can be as much as 20 miles across, and children living in Llanfair DC must travel 2.9 miles to their nearest school - Ysgol Brynhyfryd.

It seems that Denbighshire County Council have taken into their own hands to ensure the safety of the 'school run'.

But, why should a distance of a mere quarter of a mile discriminate between two families?

With one child hoping on the school bus free of charge, while the other a quarter of a mile away either has to walk or pay £1.30 for the public service bus.

Is this really fair, or safe?

And parents are understandable anxious if their children have to walk up to three miles on a busy and unpaved A525, sometimes in wind, rain and snow, with cars and trucks roaring past them.

Provisional estimates show that during the first quarter of 2008 in Wales: 22 road casualties were reported as killed, 295 were reported as seriously injured, and 2,286 as slightly injured.

The Welsh Assembly Government has casualty reduction targets to be achieved by 2010.

One of which is a 50 per cent reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured.

According to Think! (the road safety campaigner), on average 37 children up to the age of 16 were killed or seriously injured every week on UK roads in 2007.

Think! also states that the risk of a child pedestrian being involved in a road accident rises when they start school, and then rises again when children start secondary school.

Now with the long autumn and winter nights drawing in, a child's safety while walking should be paramount.

In the year 2008, are children really safe to walk "under three" miles to school?

And should it be up to the council to tell us what is a reasonable distance?

Some will say it will do no harm for a child to walk that far to school, and if parents are bothered they should drive them.

But the point is that the council is offering a free bus service to one family, and begrudging it to another- and over what?

A quarter of a mile!

Maybe the time has come for the council to go that extra mile in the cause of child safety!


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