With state and federal laws being considered to ban motorists from using cellphones or texting, there’s a new driving distraction that’s drawing scrutiny and possible prohibition: digital billboards. The New York Times business section Tuesday did a story headlined “Roadside Marquee,” which talks about safety advocates worrying that fancy high-tech billboards will get people to take their eyes off the road and cause accidents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/technology/02billboard.html?scp=1&sq;=electronic%20billboards&st;=Search
These digital billboards change appearance and are flashy and bright, natural attention grabbers, it would seem. They are already in Times Square, and cities like Detroit. At least one group, Scenic Michigan, is trying to stop this new signage from being installed throughout that state.
And last week, Michigan legislators conducted hearings on a law, the reportedly the first of its kind, that would institute a two-year ban on construction of the digital signs. And The Times said that Minnesota is going to have hearings on a similar ban later in March.
Where’s the proof that digital signs distract drivers? Well, the Federal Highway Administration has started a study that is trying to gauge whether of not the signage is distracting. That study is set to be done this summer.
And there was one study, done in 2007 by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, that determined that digital signs were no more distracting than regular signs. But skeptics about that study’s results note that it was paid for by the billboard industry.
Some 2,000 of the 450,000 billboards in the U.S. are digitized, according to The Times.