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Comment by themoonisachees | Hacker News Reader

> This means out-of-home advertising displays at bus stops, train stations and in underpasses could still be operated according to invidis managing director Florian Rotberg. “Most contracts explicitly require outdoor advertising companies to operate backlit city light posters and screens well into the night to provide passengers with more security in the waiting area. Autumn will show whether and how the exemptions will be used,” he said.

Most contracts require lighting because otherwise people can't be spammed with ads without their consent at night and they're pretending it's for public safety. I hope whoever decides on this comes down hard on them for having the audacity to pretend lighting from ads is anywhere close to helping public safety. They can get bent about contracts, contracts do not supersede the law.

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It isn't the ads, really: They are realistically speaking of lighting in bus stops, underpasses, and train stations.

Lighting in those areas, which tend to be dark or populated, helps folks feel safer. Taking away the ads makes these places darker, and I can understand not suddenly having nervous folks not take the bus or train.

Though, I agree: They can get bent about the contracts. The proper response is to install proper lighting without the ads. Hopefully this is in the works.

Still, emitting light through a thick diffuser and a poster is not as efficient as just putting up a light.

Agreed completely. As I said in the last bit: The proper solution is to put up proper lighting.

I can see this degenerating into some sort of efficiency metric that will be engineered around. For instance, it wouldn't be too hard to take the Google logo and make it a proper "light" with some LEDs. Or simply write out the name in white LEDs.

If you put a poster in front, the poster pays for the light.

Yeah I was purely viewing this from an environmental perspective, not an economical one. But you're right. This is of course the reason it's done that way.

Those areas are explicitly excluded from this.

Yeah, the person I replied to quoted it and was upset about it. I was replying to their reaction.

Those areas are the only areas I can think of that have LED signs in Germany though. Of course not entirely sure but I don't think there's a single one of those large LED screens (like the ones on time square) in Hamburg. Maybe Berlin/Frankfurt have some?

Unless I'm completely blanking on these signs being used elsewhere, excluding the bus-stop signs sounds like this will not have any noticeable effect apart from providing a nice sounding headline.

Berlin definitely has some.

>but I don't think there's a single one of those large LED screens (like the ones on time square) in Hamburg

yes, I also did not notice any of those here in Hamburg. there is a smaller one in Harvestehude; even those are so rare that I clearly noticed this one.

In very rural southern Germany, I know several electronics stores who have 7x4-meter panels, and I know a spot where they are mounted to a mast next to a federal road (with farmland around it). People always think "Times Square", but ultimately, the problem is bigger for the displays are smaller.

So basically the authorities outsourced a part of public safety to the ad companies?

Pretty much. The article says that the contracts require the lighting so that the area is illuminated. I'm gonna guess, however, that they wouldn't keep up the lighting if it weren't required.

Which really isn't so surprising, considering how pervasive advertising is in many societies.

Agree, the contracts require the lighting, not the advertising.

It goes further than that. They outsourced public transportation to private companies and those private companies outsourced the busstops to ad companies. At least here the bus shelters are owned by ad companies.

Public lighting is still another topic, I thought. Because many things are done by private companies (most?) but still those are mandated to provide a certain quality of service.

Often the entire bus stops are financed by those advertising there. At least that has always been the argument against finally disallowing tobacco/smoking ads in Germany because then smaller communities would (allegedly) not be able to finance these things.

So they could not get any other advertiser blurb on those panels? Difficult to believe.

I'm sure that some communes might struggle paying for something that's been paid for by someone else in the past but the argument really lacks if it's used to justify keeping tobacco ads around.

Like you said, other advertisers would probably happily replace them and even if that's not the case I think a country as wealthy as Germany should be able to find some way to finance bus stops ;-)

It's not only for safety for the passengers. The light also helps the driver to see the bus stops and stations. Especially bus driver who often switch routes seem to have demand for this.

Well, I'd be selling any stock you had in Ströer, they dominate German OOH advertising.

> they're pretending it's for public safety

> to pretend lighting from ads is anywhere close to helping public safety

i thought it was a known fact that more light during nighttime equals more safety. there's a reason violent crimes happen on low lit alleyways. not that germans are actually out and about after 6pm :)

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