Editorial: Digital billboards shouldn’t spur accidents

We’ve all seen some pretty creative methods of advertising, like the Oscar Mayer Weiner truck… We’ve all seen some pretty creative methods of advertising, like the Oscar Mayer Weiner truck or taping fliers up everywhere around campus.

And now, the humble billboard — a staple in the advertising industry that’s more than a century old — is being upgraded for the 21st century.

Currently, only about 2,000 of the 450,000 billboards in the United States are digital. But the advertising industry is making a push to bring thousands more to roads, according to The New York Times.

Sure, such billboards take more than a couple watts of electricity to keep their products glowing, but there’s a bigger issue surrounding their implementation: traffic safety. Michigan and Minnesota lawmakers recently held hearings on legislation that would delay the construction of digital billboards, because, even though the new billboards already are and continue to be installed on roads, legislatures want to be sure they’re not too dangerous of a distraction to drivers.

Referred by some as “television on a stick,” such billboards will only cause more car accidents given their bright, impossible-not-to-notice displays that will garner more than just a quick glance, critics say.

Still, these billboards shouldn’t turn the highway into the Las Vegas Strip, although the images can change every six to eight seconds, which is actually one of their strongest selling points. One billboard can be sold to multiple advertisers as the ads displayed cycle continuously. The signs cannot use video or animation.

A 2007 study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute that looked at drivers’ in-car behavior found that digital billboards didn’t change drivers’ actions, although opponents say this study was funded by the billboard industry. Still, with the plethora of driver distractions — from talking on cell phones to texting to deer wandering onto highways — stationary, digital billboards hardly seem a harrowing threat. Advertising often involves displaying some big logo or brief tagline that even a quick flash of the eyes can detect and instantly recognize. Whether there’s any subliminal recognition is another topic, but as long as the digital ads don’t require real reading, they’re like their predecessors, with the exception that they’ll probably attract less spray-painted graffiti.

Clear Channel, one of the nation’s biggest billboard companies, told The New York Times such digital billboards could be used for purposes other than advertising. For example, radio stations could display sports scores, and news organizations could flash headlines in a whole new way. There need to be careful limits, however. Anything requiring more than a cursory glance could prompt a legitimate distraction.

Of course, these billboards add to a world already flooded with advertisements. They could be annoying, but hopefully they won’t prove dangerous should they become more prolific.