Video billboards spur concerns about driving safety

The digital roadside advertisements are springing up around the US, raising safety concerns.

By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 6, 2007 edition

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ATLANTA - In essence, it's a 50-foot plasma TV on a 75-foot pole, set above the madding traffic pouring out of downtown Atlanta.

A slice of Times Square off Peachtree Street, the sign, which can be seen half a mile away, uses hockey players to hawk airline tickets, with images rotating every eight seconds. It's one of more than 500 digital billboards hovering over US highways.

The problem is that it didn't just catch the eye of drivers. As billboard companies scurried to erect more around the city, the Atlanta City Council in January enacted a temporary ban on the signs. It's one in a string of communities from Concord, N.H., to Eden Prairie, Minn., that has raised questions about the safety of TVs in the sky.

Now, the Federal Highway Administration is putting $150,000 toward a study to try to settle the issue as the century-old debate over billboard ethics moves from one of highway beauty to one of highway safety.

"Clearly, today's technologically savvy drivers ... might drive by such things, unfazed, thinking 'It's a big TV on a stick. Who cares?' " says Doug Hecox, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). "But whether the risks are the same across all age groups is unknown."

For now, the FHWA provides only cursory guidelines on electronic billboards, leaving states and municipalities to decide whether or not they should be permitted, Mr. Hecox says.

For guidance, most planners look to a 1996 FHWA ruling that permitted "tri-view" signs – mechanical signs where triangular panels turn over to display new images every few seconds. No state allows moving images on highway billboards. However, regulations are generally more lax for "on-premises" signs, like those located on the grounds of car dealers and sporting arenas, that can show video clips and animation – even if they are located next to interstates.

Digital billboards cost about $500,000 to put up. Billboard companies like them because they can charge premium rates for an effective medium that can show many ads on the same pole, media analysts say. In fact, outdoor advertising sales grew about 12 percent last year, second only to Internet ad sales, they say.

"There is growth there, not just for electronic billboards, but also for plain old paper billboards in the right locations," says Neal Weinstock, president of Weinstock Media Analysis in New York.

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