It's understandable that parents of students at Utah Valley schools are concerned about traffic safety. Also understandable is their frustration with the difficulties involved making improvements.

A similar situation exists near the new Lakeview Elementary School in Provo. Parents and the Provo School District have asked for a stoplight on Geneva Road. Here, too, UDOT says traffic studies show a light isn't called for.

Yet anybody can see the cars zipping along Geneva Road at high speed. Because there's no light, the district will launch its own safety plan. It will have a permanent bus stop there, at an annual cost of at least $8,000, just to ferry kids across the street.

Sad to say, parents are justified in worrying. Too many drivers ignore pedestrians.

It's gotten so bad that the Utah Highway Safety Office -- in conjunction with police departments, including those in Provo, American Fork and Spanish Fork -- has been taking part in a nationwide program called Operation Crosswalk Enforcement. In this effort a police officer in plain clothes, as a kind of decoy, crosses a marked intersection as vehicles approach. The officer notes vehicles that fail to stop, as required by law, and radios the license plate numbers to colleagues parked down the street, who hand out tickets.

One frightening indicator is that the decoys find that even wearing bright clothing isn't enough to alert some drivers, and officers have had some close calls as vehicles roar through crosswalks. In at least one Utah city, the decoy officer resorted to carrying bright-colored balloons, and even then some motorists failed to yield.

If law officers find themselves having to step lively to stay out of the way of motorists, the dangers to children are far greater.

It's not that nothing can be done. It's all too rare, but possible, for government to respond to public concerns with a little energy and imagination. For example, American Fork has narrowed one street so that students going to Shelley Elementary will have a shorter walk.

The ongoing danger is frustrating to parents and school officials at Salem Hills High and Lakeview Elementary. Parents and school officials point out that when school opens there will be more vehicles on the scene, not to mention bunches of kids trudging to class or hurrying home when the final bell rings. So why not go ahead with measures to make intersections safer for those students?

Traffic officials say they are bound by regulations that don't let them guess how much more traffic may be drawn to an area. It's true that guesses are not good enough when speaking of ordinary highway questions. But where the safety of school children is at stake, government should display more flexibility and urgency.

For heaven's sake, make an educated guess.

Come to think of it, it's not much of a guess. It's a certainty that within a couple of weeks hundreds of students, parents, teachers and staff, in cars and on buses or on foot, will be going to and from those schools, Monday through Friday.

UDOT says it will conduct further studies on traffic at Lakeview and Salem Hills High after school starts. It can only be hoped that students will be safe until then, and that the agency will get beyond data and open its eyes to the dangers.

Bureaucratic inertia is annoying always, but when children's safety is at stake it's time to stop holding rigidly to abstract rules and shift into action.