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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's not just your opinion based on...
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
Try providing some evidence of how "highly regulated" billboard distraction levels are and I might take this conversation seriously.
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.
And you have any kind of conclusive evidence to this claim?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
However, I think they're targeting everywhere in the UK, historic or not.
If you are stuck in traffic or on a bus in an ugly urban hellscape, is a billboard really that bad? 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!
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. And billboards are a pretty unobtrusive and low-tech way of getting my intention. I still regularly learn about new restaurants or attractions or museum exhibits because of well placed billboards.
I certainly thing some billboard types and content and locations are bad (digital billboards - yuck). But that seems like an argument for good policy making from your local government rather than a blanket opposition to all forms.