A shimmering 10-by-36-foot display casts a cool glow on the intersection of North and Oakland avenues on Milwaukee’s East Side, bombarding motorists with rotating messages: Switch to AT&T U-verse! Get 2% on a 26-month CD at Associated Bank! Donate to the Red Cross!
Over the last three years, Clear Channel and Lamar Advertising have erected 30 such digital billboards in southeastern Wisconsin. Across the country, more than 1,800 have been built since 2001. Advertising companies love their flexibility. Their safety, however, remains a point of debate.
“When the board changes, the motorist sees the movement,” says Bob Bryson, chief traffic and street lighting engineer for the Milwaukee Department of Public Works. “These signs are better at getting people’s eyes off the road.”
But it’s hard to prove this causes accidents. “No one will ever admit that they were watching a sign,” Bryson says. “They would never get auto insurance again.” Catherine O’Hara, outdoor advertising control specialist for the Federal Highway Administration, agrees: “It’s not easy to get your arms around the cause of such accidents.”
But she’s trying. O’Hara is overseeing a federal study that hopes to learn how long, on average, drivers take their eyes off the road to see the billboards. Driver behavior will be measured on two 30-minute-long routes in two unnamed cities. The routes will have digital and standard vinyl billboards and other visually interesting objects. A draft of the study should be completed this month, with the final report to be released at a later date. Bryson says federal officials have asked him to review the draft report.
A Wisconsin state statute already regulates changeable billboards with very specific rules: Any message must last for at least six seconds, and traveling or segmented messages are prohibited. And when the billboard changes to the next message, it must happen quickly, taking one second or less.
Billboards and outdoor ads in America go back hundreds of years, to the days when signs were painted on buildings and later on larger advertising structures – all in high-traffic areas. The issue of safety has arisen before. In 1971, San Diego passed an ordinance “to eliminate hazards to pedestrians and motorists brought about by distracting sign displays.”
A decade later, the U.S. Supreme Court found the ordinance unconstitutional because the First and 14th Amendments forbid government from thwarting communication. In a concurring opinion, Justice William Brennan said the city failed to prove the billboards had actually impaired traffic safety.
Billboard companies like the new digital boards: They can be flexibly programmed to include sports scores, weather and current events. “The new technology allows an advantage in competing with other electronic media,” says Joseph Stribl, digital network manager for Clear Channel Outdoor Inc. in Waukesha.
For $200 a day, Stribl says, advertisers can buy a billboard location, and thousands of motorists will see the message, which is visible for about 2.5 hours daily. For the same money, the advertiser would only get a 60-second radio spot or a 30-second TV ad.
Scenic America, a national not-for-profit devoted to preserving America’s natural beauty, is opposed to any billboards, calling them “sky trash” and “litter on a stick.” As for the digital kind, the group’s president, Mary Tracy, says: “Drivers who take their eyes off the road for two seconds are far more likely to be involved in a crash.” Whatever the result of the federal study, the group is likely to push for banning the billboards.
