Q: Jay Dee of Alta Loma complained about advertising billboards along the freeway which he said are distracting to drivers with their lengthy messages and phone numbers. Dee asked who gives these billboards permission to exist and why they are allowed to include way more information on them than a driver going 65 mph-plus could read or absorb. “These billboards should be eliminated or removed. We shouldn’t see any billboards at all,” he said.
A: The advertising billboards you see along the freeways are regulated by the Office of Outdoor Advertising, under Caltrans, so it’s the state of California that allows these billboards to exist near certain state-controlled freeways. Caltrans explains on its website, “Caltrans regulates the placement of outdoor advertising displays visible from California highways. Caltrans performs regular reviews of freeways and highways identified on the National Highway System to enforce outdoor advertising requirements under the Federal Highway Beautification Act and the State’s Outdoor Advertising Act.” (Visit the website here: https://dot.ca.gov/programs/traffic-operations/oda).
Advertisers and billboard owners need to get a license from the state for these. Outdoor advertising, which includes freeway billboards and other things like advertising signs on buses, is an $8 billion industry in the United States, according to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, the lead trade association of the domestic outdoor advertising industry in the U.S. So, it’s not likely to go away any time soon.
Freeway billboards in California are regulated in numerous ways, including for such things as location and how light or brilliant, they are, in the interest of safety. For example, billboards are prohibited on officially designated California Scenic Highway, and political messages can’t go up sooner than 90 days before an election.
As to the question of whether freeway billboards are distracting to the point of being dangerous, that issue has been studied a lot over the years with most studies saying the distraction to drivers doesn’t reach the serious danger level.
One study, called, “The Impact of Billboards on Driver Visual Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review,” by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4411179/, found that in most cases, “visual behavior measures did not seem to indicate that drivers were dangerously distracted by billboards. Billboards did not appear to affect the overall percentage of time spent glancing at the forward roadway, and drivers seemed able to self-regulate their attention to billboards when they realized that the demands of the driving task had increased.”
The study also said “drivers tended to make several short, consecutive glances to billboards rather than fewer, longer glances.” This study agreed with previous ones that concluded billboards likely pose a “modest, though nonnegligible, traffic safety risk through driver distraction.” It did suggest, however, that further research into billboard design, driver characteristics, and traffic issues would add context and expand understanding of this topic.
Our reader can voice a complaint about advertising billboards by contacting the Department of Transportation, Division of Traffic Operations, Office of Outdoor Advertising, P.O. Box 942874, MS-36, Sacramento, CA 94274-0001. Email ODA@dot.ca.gov, or call 916-654-6473.
Q: Dave Simpson of Moreno Valley observed that on the westbound 60 Freeway in Moreno Valley, a group of homeless people set up a camp on the shoulder just west of Perris Boulevard. “This seems to me like a very dangerous situation,” Simpson said. He asked if the freeway camp is legal and whether the California Highway Patrol was aware of the situation.
A: The CHP is indeed aware of the encampment which is located on state property, and is trying to make the group leave the area, said Officer Juan Quintero of the Riverside office. A few weeks ago, CHP officers delivered eviction notices to the camp’s residents, he said. The effort to make the homeless vacate the area is challenging and ongoing.
Do you commute to work in the Inland Empire? Spend a lot of time in your vehicle? Have questions about driving, freeways, toll roads or parking? If so, write or call On the Road and we’ll try to answer your questions. Please include your question or issue, name, city of residence, phone number and email address. Write ontheroad@pe.com or call 951-368-9670.
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Who regulates those distracting advertising billboards along the freeways? - Press-Enterprise
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