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.
