Electronic Billboards: Are they Safe?

Fairwarning, a great organization for the protection of consumers, recently took another look at these questions. They noted a Swedish study that found that :

drivers take long gazes at electronic billboards, possibly raising the risk of highway crashes.

As they went on to note, the billboard industry doesn't like the study at all:

“The Swedish report was inconclusive, yet state, national, and private research has shown no impact on traffic safety in the US,” said Ken Klein, OAAA executive vice president. “When weighing the relevance of this research to the US, a good-science question is: was the Swedish research on the same product operating under the same circumstances as digital billboards in the US? The answer is no.”

I have been wondering about this issue for awhile. It usually comes up when they want to sell me one of the sights. I have so far come down with the belief that when a sign is switching vs. staying the same like an old school billboard, there has got to be an additional distraction.

Just the light changing and the scenery can serve to take the driver's eyes off the road. Clearly they sell them for people to look at. Hopefully, more independent research will be done in the United States to give us a better answer.