> distracting video billboards in general should be banned for safety reasons

My state bans all billboards. They're thought pollution.

https://movia.media/moving-billboard-blog/why-is-billboard-a...

This law holds in Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont. 3 out of the 4 are outermost states of the U.S., and the other is close to being so. Perhaps since there isn't much interstate traffic going through these states and their state populations are low, there was not so great of an incentive for advertisers to lobby against such laws banning highway ads.

Fantastic. They have this huge bright video billboard where I drive - at night it is ridiculously distracting. I have no idea how they pass muster on road safety rules.

That’s amazing. They’re getting ridiculous in the big cities in Australia. You can’t avoid them.

I was in Byron Bay town last Saturday night. I saw a truck with three massive screen billboards driving around (advertising the new alcohol deliver service by Dan Murphys’s...). I couldn’t believe how bright it was driving behind it. How that is legal is beyond me! Last thing the country needs is more alcohol. Advertising in Australia is getting out of hand.

WTF that is awesome, I had no idea this was a thing!

How does that not run afoul of first amendment rights? For example if I wanted to advertise my political view on a sign mounted on my land, would that really be something the state Dan block?

They're state laws. It's a 9th/10th Amendment issue. A federal billboard ban would certainly seem to violate the 1st.

A ban in California would seem illegal as well, due to the affirmative right to free speech contained in the California Constitution (see Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins).

Here in Maine, on-premises signs are allowed but have strict limitations:

https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/23/title23sec1914.htm...

But the supremacy clause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause) prevents state laws from preempting federal laws, including the constitution.

Yeah, you're right.

It looks like sign bans are usually unconstitutional when content-based, where the substance of what is being communicated is taken into account (e.g. bans on only commercial signs), but generally hold up if content-neutral and based on reasonable factors, such as safety or aesthetics.

See Reed v. Town of Gilbert (content-based ban struck down) versus Scenic Arizona v. City of Phoenix (content-neutral and safety-based ban on electronic signs upheld).

https://www.scenic.org/sign-control/billboard-laws/important...

If the sign throws fireworks at passers-by, yes. Because the point of a billboard ban is not their contents, but the distraction they cause. It would be enough to tune them down and nobody would mind but yeah, losing perceived ad revenue is somehow never the first thought.

I imagine in the denser cities you could get away with banning driving altogether (except transit).