After initially denying the request, the West Virginia Division of Highways has encouraged Brooke County commissioners to submit a new application for a signal system at the northern intersection of state Route 2 and Pleasant Avenue in Wellsburg.

The system, if approved – and we hope it will be – would be used by Brooke County Emergency Management to alert drivers when an ambulance would be making its way onto the highway from its new centralized station.

A similar system has been in use in Weirton in recent years for the Weirton Fire Department to access the city’s Main Street via Sarah’s Lane between the Millsop Community Center and the Mary H. Weir Public Library.

State officials denied the original application, saying there wasn’t enough of a history of vehicle crashes in the area. They also didn’t consider visibility to be a problem.

The point, though, is to prevent any of those crashes from happening.

Even with removing some trees to open up the view of the area, there is still a four-lane highway as well as the change in speed limits on state Route 2 at that particular intersection – it goes from 55 mph to 40 mph going south and 40 to 55 heading north.

This is a situation where new signage, as DOH officials have suggested, isn’t going to do the trick. In the event of any emergency, an ambulance is going to be entering the intersection without notice to those driving on Route 2. A controllable light system, such as what is being proposed by commissioners, would be far more effective than a sign posted on the side of the road.

All too often, the WVDOH makes its decisions based on numbers from a couple of observations. Traffic lights in existence for years have been removed, and requests for new devices in areas of increased traffic are often ignored. This is a matter of safety, both to local emergency responders and to the motoring public. We would hope those in Charleston would take it seriously.