Digital billboards are driving people to distraction, quite literally. Just the other day, a woman reading her email in her car on her Treo, hit me from behind while I was stopped on the freeway. The number of distractions to the modern driver are growing fast - from email to iPods to cell phones (now outlawed without an earpiece in many states, which doesn't really solve the spell by name dialing problem on some of these complex little devices and requires an ability to connect a peripheral device and/or turn on a bluetooth-enabled device while driving at high speeds). At this pace, automobiles will resemble home entertainment theaters complete with auditorium seating in the next decade.
Personally, I can't wait for the day until cars drive themselves. But until then, we'll have distracting digital billboards, now with recruitment ads for none other than the Albequerque police department (oh, the irony). Yes, this is the same Albequerque police department with one of the oddest recruitment campaigns ever developed by a police department, the runaway bride campaign (it really did sound like a good idea by the coffee machine, cap'n).
From a write-up in the San Antonio Express-News:
Des Moines, Iowa, placed a moratorium on digital billboards in February to study its potential safety ramifications. The city currently has at least one digital billboard operated by Clear Channel.
"The content is beautiful, but my fear is that it is a distraction," said Tom Vlassis, the Des Moines city councilman who proposed the city's moratorium on the technology.
In Wichita, Kan., where Clear Channel recently announced plans for a digital network, city leaders are debating whether to dim the electronic boards' lights.
Other cities are embracing the digital billboards — at least to some extent.
In Albuquerque, police use the signs for recruiting. Across the country, Amber Alert, weather services and America's Most Wanted use them to display warnings and to post photos of fugitives or missing children.
Still, Scenic America's Fry doesn't think that's enough to make adopting the technology worth it.
"It's not appropriate to create one kind of public safety problem to help another," he said.
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