Signs you can’t ignore

I can only wonder what Lady Bird Johnson would think about the new electronic billboards going up along freeways all over the nation.

It was, of course, the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson who was the spiritual leader of the campaign against billboards in the 1960s, perhaps an obscure issue for a first lady, but in hindsight an important campaign that has affected not only visual blight but highway safety.

Nobody could have foreseen nearly half a century ago how billboards would evolve and grow in their ability to attract the attention of drivers. The technology has raced ahead of government regulators’ ability to understand how they affect public safety.

Electronic billboards can create brilliant, illuminated, super-sized images that change rapidly and can even provide full-motion videos, akin to an old-fashioned drive-in screen. The Federal Highway Administration has banned full-motion electronic billboards, saying they violate the 1960s ban on billboards with bright, flashing lights, created at Lady Bird’s behest.

In a memorandum dated June 12, 1998, the agency ruled: “After careful consideration, we have concluded that such signs using flashing, intermittent or moving lights to display animated or scrolling advertising raise significant highway safety questions because of their potential to be distracting to motorists.”

Full-motion billboards are still allowed in some localities, such as the Las Vegas Strip. Nonetheless, the federal ruling set down in concrete terms that electronic billboards can represent a potential hazard to highway safety, rejecting the billboard industry’s claims that they have no effect on safety.

Electronic billboards can still show sharp images that change periodically and are far brighter than anything else on the road, particularly at night. You see these at Southern California casinos, such as the billboard promoting the Bicycle Casino on the Long Beach Freeway and the one promoting the Hawaiian Gardens Casino on the 605 Freeway.

Under California law, as administered by Caltrans, such electronic billboards are restricted from changing displays more often than every four seconds, according to Doug Failing, director of Caltrans District 7, which covers L.A. County.

“We have concerns about the potential for driver distraction,” Failing said about all billboards, electronic and traditional.

California law is actually weaker on this issue than many other states. Georgia, for example, forbids electronic billboards that change messages more often than every 10 seconds, and other states set an 8-second minimum between changes. The idea is to not present drivers with too many messages.

Only four states long ago banned billboards: Maine, Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska, according to Barbara Wessinger, a South Carolina highway official and chairwoman of the National Alliance of Highway Beautification Agencies.

“You are going to be hard-pressed today to find anybody who can ban billboards, because the industry is so powerful,” she said.

Wessinger said her organization tries not to be adversarial with the billboard industry, which is represented by the Outdoor Advertising Assn. of America. In many cases, major billboard companies meet higher standards than independent operators, who are less disciminating, according to a spokesman for Clear Channel, a billboard company.

“Billboards are part of America’s culture and visual fabric,” the association says on its website. Perhaps the group is referring to a Los Angeles strip club billboard on the Santa Ana Freeway that recently showed a blond woman perched provocatively in a minidress. Similar messages occur in cities across the nation.

“We talk about free speech,” an association spokeswoman said.

As for safety, the association rejects claims that its products compromise public safety, pointing to a Virginia Tech study that found drivers are not distracted by billboards. The billboard industry, however, paid for the study and carefully avoided any detailed examination of electronic billboards.

A much broader study by the Federal Highway Administration’s office of real estate services reviewed research on electronic billboards and found mixed evidence about their safety.

For example, Wisconsin investigators found a 35% increase in crashes along a segment of I-94 after an electronic billboard that displayed sporting scores was installed in 1984. Similarly, Boston investigators found that an electronic sign created a “distraction and safety risk” along the city’s Central Artery. Investigators in Finland have found that drivers’ eyes dwell on billboards far longer than on speed limit signs.

The federal study also found a widespread lack of understanding of the issue. “Unfortunately, the subject is not well documented,” it says. “At this point, it appears there is no effective technique or method appropriate for evaluating the safety effects of electronic billboards on driver attention or distraction.”

But highway organizations, such as Caltrans, have no doubt that badly designed, poorly placed outdoor advertising of any kind represents a potential safety risk to the public. Failing said the agency carefully reviews each billboard, examining placement, lighting and even the size of its lettering.

Ralph Vartabedian can be reached at ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.