More communities banning 'television on a stick'

More than a dozen cities around the nation have banned what some consider a growing external driving distraction: digital billboards.

Digital billboards change images every four to 10 seconds, flashing multiple messages from one or more advertisers on the same sign. Opponents such as John Regenbogen of Scenic Missouri deride them as "television on a stick." Several communities have banned digital billboards outright, the most recent being Denver this month. Other places have put a moratorium on them pending a federal study on whether they distract drivers. At least one other city and two states are studying moratoriums. "The digital billboards are a distraction," says Fred Wessels, an alderman in St. Louis, which just approved a one-year moratorium on such signs."If they weren't distracting, they wouldn't be doing their job," says Max Ashburn, spokesman for Scenic America, a national non-profit group that seeks to limit billboards. Research on the issue is mixed. A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study in 2007, financed by the billboard industry, found that they aren't distracting. A review of studies completed last year for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, however, concluded that they "attract drivers' eyes away from the road for extended, demonstrably unsafe periods of time."