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Comment by devb | Hacker News Reader

They're definitely a distraction? Excellent! Let's start getting rid of roadside advertising, billboards, obnoxious fast food signs...

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Fun fact: In Vermont, billboards are illegal.

America would be so much more beautiful if we had fewer billboards and cables were underground instead hosted on poles. I think it's patriotic to oppose billboards and telephone polls.

Anchorage has a law that in order to do any work on above-ground cables (other than emergency repairs), you must put them underground at the same time.

NYC, or at least Manhattan, has had a law requiring underground utilities since 1888!

Its substantially more expensive to run cables underground everywhere in the nation.

A price that's probably worth it in many cases.

Don't be facile; surely a picture implying that the government is going to blow you up with a Reaper for going 10 over the limit is more distracting than a picture of a Big Mac. Especially in a state that (I hear) is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Given American levels of obesity, Im not sure you are correct.

So the bad news is that Big Macs kill more Americans than drones, and the bad news is that we're closing the gap.

Have you driven I95 near Philadelphia lately?

I think the contingent of electronic animated, image-changing, and even occasionally flashing billboards carries a slightly higher distraction factor.

It's beginning to remind me of Fahrenheit 451.

And, to be successful, billboard advertising necessarily must distract you.

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