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Billboards distract drivers and are a safety hazard. They’re also lit up like crazy and are an extra hazard at night not to mention the light pollution.

Advertising for local events should be allowed under some carve out but it would be nice if the vast majority of ads died as they’re not that. Here in SF for example when entering or leaving the city the ads are full of coke, Disney, Apple or Google phones, or various startups trying to show VCs their money is being put to good use (same thing film studios do in LA putting awards nominations and tv ada on billboards on the route to work/home of influential money people on a given project)

I agree that some billboards are real road hazards. But if you are stuck at a light or in a massive traffic I'd rather you look at them than your phone.

SF is actually the example I had in mind because they do a good job of keeping them away from the scenic areas - but the whole downtown core is already such a dump that I really don't mind the advertisements.

I think you are also discounting how weird SF ads are - as a visitor they are actually unique and interesting to me. One of the fun things about visiting different cities is seeing how unique the cultures are, and ads actually give you a good window into this.

> But if you are stuck at a light or in a massive traffic I'd rather you look at them than your phone.

Billboards don't only appear when traffic is stopped though. It's not worth the increased danger.

Also, I really don't think the presence of billboards is a common deciding factor in whether or not someone is looking at their phone. Maybe if they're driving in an otherwise featureless void, but I think people are either going to look at their phone or not, regardless of what's outside their car.

No. But billboards are generally placed in areas of higher traffic. And I don't necessarily see why they are implicitly more distracting than the myriad road signs, bumper stickers, car decals, etc that drivers already navigate.

Regardless, your DoT or local authority probably already has a lot of rules in place about how visually distracting billboards are allowed to be, and which section of roads they are determined to be safe on. So they are already fairly highly regulated from a safety standpoint.

> But billboards are generally placed in areas of higher traffic.

Great. High traffic areas are the most dangerous places for distractions.

> why they are implicitly more distracting than the myriad road signs, bumper stickers, car decals, etc that drivers already navigate.

I'll list the reasons:

1. Road signs are standardized in a given state, and they're designed to be extremely easy to understand at a glance, so their meaning can typically be understood without the driver having to actually read anything on them. They're also pretty close to where you should be looking already.

2. Bumper stickers and car decals are necessarily on the objects you're supposed to be watching most of the time. (But, yes, they can still be distracting.)

3. Billboards are often not in line-of-sight of the things you're trying to avoid crashing into, and can be wildly distracting. The fact that they're regulated for levels of visual distraction is hilarious news to me, having seen billboards in real life. Calling them "fairly highly regulated" feels disingenuous; others might say "barely regulated."

4. Having fewer distractions is less dangerous than having more distractions, so we should try to reduce distractions. We're not going to get rid of road signs, because that would be insane. We could get rid of bumper stickers, but they're orders of magnitude less common than billboards and they're less distracting and they typically don't have all the other negative effects of advertising that billboards do.

You can surely provide some kind of research, that can support your argument... right?

It's not just your opinion based on...

I might find this counter at all interesting if not for:

A) it stands to reason that if phones are distracting so are billboards which are literally designed to get your attention

B) a simple internet search yields all sorts of research into this topic supporting the common sense expectation.

As a community, we should strive for higher information commentary maybe?

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/05/02/study-distracting-roa...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4411179/

>it stands to reason that if phones are distracting

The action of using your phone is distracting, not that phones are distracting. You can absolutely use your phone as a GPS. The process of interaction is the distracting part.

>literally designed to get your attention

The NIH article actually says literally the opposite, of what you're saying. Billboards aren't distracting enough to completely draw your attention.

>a simple internet search yields all sorts of research into this topic supporting the common sense expectation.

No... No it doesn't. As evidenced by the results you provided. One talks about safety billboards and the other literally says the opposite of your claim.

And I quote: "Generally, billboard-related distraction appeared to be minor and regulated by drivers as the demands of the driving task changed."

>As a community, we should strive for higher information commentary maybe?

Yes. You definitely should note just make un-appealable claim without knowing the reasons for it. Your argument that billboards are a safety hazard is just your opinion, that has more evidence against than for.

I mean the NIH conclusion is literally:

> However, this review’s findings suggest that this [billboards are not a distraction] may not be true in all cases. Future research should emphasize the tails of the distribution in addition to average cases, in terms of both the analysis of visual behavior and the complexity of driving tasks. Further research is also needed to understand the effects of billboard design, driver characteristics, and road and traffic context.

The amount of people who text & drive and don't get into any accidents as a result on the road is quite high. Yet we still recognize texting & driving as dangerous. And active billboards are much more distracting as per the NIH paper than passive ones. Lit up bright ones at night that are engaging in some way are going to be more distracting than passive ones during the day.

> Yet we still recognize texting & driving as dangerous

Do I need to explain that looking at a billboard and interacting with you phone are wildly different activities? Do we need to discuss the differences between terms passive and active?

Equating glancing at billboards(less than 1 sec) and texting(on average 5 seconds) - requires ignoring the basic principles behind those two actions.

Texting requires your visual attention, your fine motor functions and your mental abilities engaged.

Looking at a few words and an image requires considerably less engagement.

https://www.driversalert.com/10-terrifying-facts-about-texti...

> And active billboards are much more distracting as per the NIH paper than passive ones

Of course they are. But distracting and hazard are two very different things. Many things are distracting, but aren't a hazard.

And your other link actually shows how different are things on the road that require active attention(active safety notices) vs things that are just informative(signs and billboards).

And if you made a claim that video billboards are likely to be too distracting, instead of generalizing that all billboards are a safety hazard - I wouldn't even engaged. As it stands, your position of "all billboards are a safety hazard" is just an opinion - with evidence to the contrary.

Considering most of my arguments are self-evident, no. I'm not going to provide research to prove that... let's see, "bumper stickers are attached to cars," or that "official road signs are easy to read at a glance."

Try providing some evidence of how "highly regulated" billboard distraction levels are and I might take this conversation seriously.

"Generally, billboard-related distraction appeared to be minor and regulated by drivers as the demands of the driving task changed. However, this review’s findings suggest that this may not be true in all cases. Future research should emphasize the tails of the distribution in addition to average cases, in terms of both the analysis of visual behavior and the complexity of driving tasks. Further research is also needed to understand the effects of billboard design, driver characteristics, and road and traffic context."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4411179/

> official road signs are easy to read at a glance

They aren't. Specially in the UK.

> Billboards distract drivers and are a safety hazard.

And you have any kind of conclusive evidence to this claim?

Have you actually tried a search online before making this comment? I put some links in another comment but it took longer for you to post that comment than to find the relevant studies.

>If you are stuck in traffic or on a bus in an ugly urban hellscape, is a billboard really that bad?

Yes, it intrudes into a person's thought pattern with the explicit goal of selling you a product/service/idea. I'd much rather stare at a wall and continue with my thought or look at a work of art (which 99.99% of ads are not, imho).

> I'm sorry, they are not going to plant trees in Times Square to replace the billboards. Even in their own press photos, they are showing several billboards that are covering up even uglier buildings!

So why not put up a non-distracting work of art? Have ads become the only visual expression allowed in public?

> Maybe you are an enlightened individual and want to put an end to consumerism and society. In the meantime I personally still buy things and shop.

It's interesting to me that you connect these things so strongly, as if anyone opposed to public ads are also opposed to all of modern commerce. I guess it's a sign of how pervasive the ad industry has become in certain areas, that it seems inseparable from normal business. Fortunately it is quite possible to have vibrant free markets in areas that are not plastered in corporate advertisements.

I'm was only being a little flip there. Taken straight from their website:

> We see the fight against billboards as part of a wider struggle for social, ecological and economic justice.

So to be completely fair, I am responding to the case that they are making that combatting billboards is just one piece of an intersectional fight against corporations and injustice.

Well, yes. Previously, anyone could put up a poster on a public Morris column in my city, now all the public space is owned by jcdecaux.

I agree that ads on ugly 10-lane highways don't really detract from anything, but this is not the case with the cities this organisation deals with. They are mostly historic, pedestrianised cities in England where (especially digital) advertising would be of serious detriment to the surroundings, which is what is being campaigned against here.

That makes sense. I wouldn't want ads or anything else ugly in a historic area, but also this is normally something you combat locally. It seems like this site targets an oddly broad audience.

A lot of people in Britain live in, work in or regularly visit a historic area.

However, I think they're targeting everywhere in the UK, historic or not.

I can totally see not wanting ads in historic areas, but on their website you can see them protesting billboards in industrial sections and freeway underpasses and the like.

Man, this site almost looks like an intentional distraction from real pollution-fighting measures.

>Maybe you are an enlightened individual and want to put an end to consumerism and society. In the meantime I personally still buy things and shop.

Do you really see the removal of advertising from public space as this much of a threat to your way of life? Your sarcastic remark about ending consumerism and society sounds quite hateful towards people who don't want to see advertising, whereas (speaking from myself at least) I feel no hate at all towards people who don't mind ads. My preference for not viewing ads comes purely from my own personal annoyance that I experience whenever I see them, it does not come from any kind of hate or dislike towards people like you who don't mind them, and I don't really want to change anyone's lifestyle.

If you don't want to see X, you just have to no look. Being offended by X, doesn't mean that you have an inherent right to ban X.

X throughout the times were/are ads, black people, campaign billboards, crossdressing and Pride parades.

Every time someone says "it should be banned, because I don't want to see it in public" is eerily reminiscent of the arguments of homophobes that I hear all the time.

"I don't want to see" or "it offends me" must never be a reason for banning something. It's not sufficient.

I knew you were a troll.

You're right.

Because no one can ever have an opinion that is opposite to you and your claims never require evidence to back them up.

Calling someone a troll, because you just throw out absurd claims expecting everyone to take your word for it - is quite arrogant.

Yeah, I'd oppose the installation of a billboard in my neighborhood, that's about it. You wanna put one on the highway or commercial zone, I don't really care. I've lived in billboard-heavy cities (like LA) and billboard-free ones.

I support you. I've been living in a city with no billboards for a while - it's rather boring for various reasons, billboards would be an improvement.

How boring can your city be that billboards are enough entertainment to improve it? Are you sure you're, y'know, participating in urban life at all?