Freeway Billboard Foes Cite Safety Concerns

In a city where motorists are notorious for driving with a cell phone at one ear and a steaming cup of latte in their lap, Los Angeles city officials are considering a proposal that some critics say will add another distraction for freeway drivers.

Under a plan tentatively approved by the Los Angeles City Council, the city will end a 50-year ban on freeway billboards by allowing up to 70 massive roadside advertisements along the city’s busiest freeways. In exchange, the billboard industry will take down more than 2,000 smaller billboards along city streets.

A final decision on the plan is expected in the next month or two.

Opponents initially attacked the plan on two fronts: They argued that dozens of blaring ads would further blight the city’s already cacophonous landscape. And they suggested the deal was a political sellout to an industry that is a top campaign contributor at City Hall.

Some opponents are now adding to those initial objections the issue of driver safety. They say the signs will lead to more accidents.

“The truth is that signs are meant to be a distraction,” said Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, a vocal opponent of the plan.

The billboard industry vehemently denies any safety problem, arguing that such concerns are based on anecdotal evidence.

“Traffic safety experts have studied the relationship between outdoor advertising and traffic accidents since the 1960s, finding no authoritative evidence that billboards are linked to traffic accidents,” said Eric Rose, a lobbyist for Eller Media, the largest outdoor advertising company in the country.

City officials estimate there are 9,700 billboards in Los Angeles. But there is no regular inspection program, so officials do not know how many are illegal.

Billboard firms charge an average of $500 to $1,000 per month to rent a billboard, depending on the amount of vehicle and foot traffic that passes by. But because some freeways carry more than 200,000 cars per day, billboard officials say they can charge eight to 10 times that amount for a freeway billboard.

Thus, the deal allows billboard firms to collect the extra profit while the city gets to remove thousands of ugly, illegal billboards that plague primarily working-class neighborhoods in East and South Central Los Angeles.

Supporters of the plan, such as Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents parts of South Los Angeles, argue that the safety issue is a red herring. He said critics are simply trying to keep billboards from going up in their neighborhoods.

“Safety is a pretext to aesthetics,” he said.

In debating the safety aspects of the billboard plan, the billboard industry and some city officials have exchanged charges of hypocrisy.

Billboard industry officials point out that many of the same city officials who have raised the issue of freeway safety approved the construction of two massive electronic marquees for the downtown Staples Center arena. Those signs--complete with moving text and pictures--are 135 and 143 feet tall. They are visible from two freeways and are nearly three times taller than most billboards.

Councilman Mike Feuer, an opponent of the plan who voted for the Staples Center signs, said the arena’s marquees are a moot issue. He argues that the city should study driver distractions before permitting freeway billboards. Feuer made a motion to conduct such a study, but the proposal was rejected by the council.

“I think it’s ridiculous to move ahead without knowing anything about the safety issues,” he said.

Meanwhile, critics of the billboard deal say industry officials are talking out of both sides of their mouths: They insist billboards are not a distraction, yet they would levy substantial fees, presumably by telling advertisers about the hundreds of thousands of motorists who would be sure to see their signs.

Eric Rubin, an attorney for the Outdoor Advertising Assn. of America, shrugs off such criticism.

“I think there is a difference between something getting someone’s attention and something causing a safety hazard for drivers,” he said.

Billboards are not a distraction because they are designed to send a message instantly with only a few words, outdoor advertisers say.

Some billboards get that message across with scantily clad women or blinking neon. No flashing lights or moving text would be permitted on freeway billboards in Los Angeles. The billboards would be up to 672 square feet and as tall as 45 feet--about the height of a four-story building.

Both sides say their position on the safety issue is supported by hard data.

Miscikowski’s staff collected nine driver safety studies conducted in the last 50 years. The studies reached mixed conclusions, some finding a strong connection between accidents and billboards and others concluding that such a connection is impossible to make.

“Quite often, there is a combination of difficult-to-quantify factors that lead to accidents,” said a 1976 Australian study.

The most recent study on the matter was released last month by the Automobile Assn. of America’s Foundation for Traffic Safety. It studied nearly 5,000 accident reports in North Carolina between 1995 and 1999. But none of those accidents were directly attributed to billboard distractions.

“The search . . . appears to suggest that some items--such as CB radios, billboards and temperature controls--are not significant distractions,” the study said.

The report concluded that the largest category of distractions--29%--is caused by people and objects outside of the vehicle, such as police, animals and pedestrians.

Despite the report’s conclusions, officials from the AAA traffic safety foundation contend that billboards are a distraction and a potential safety hazard.

“What they do is take your eyes away from the traffic in front of you,” said Stephanie Faul, a spokeswoman for the foundation. “It certainly adds to the danger.”

Lori Dinkin, a retired Valley Village resident, said she doesn’t need studies to know that billboards are a distraction. She said freeway billboards would just exacerbate what can already be a tense ride on the local interstate.

“When I see signs, it’s a terrible distraction, because you try to read and you can’t,” Dinkin said. “No matter what, your eyes automatically go up, even if it’s a fraction of a second.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Lost Focus

The specific sources of distraction among distracted drivers were, in order of frequency:

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DISTRACTION % OF DRIVERS Outside person, object, or event 29.4% Adjusting radio/cassette/CD 11.4% Other occupant 10.9% Moving object in vehicle 4.3% Other device/object 2.9% Adjusting vehicle/climate controls 2.8% Eating and/or drinking 1.7% Using/dialing cell phone 1.5% Smoking related 0.9% Other distractions 25.6% Unknown distraction 8.6%

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Source: Automobile Assn. of America’s Foundation for Traffic Safety