When you’re driving, it’s wisest to keep your eyes on the road. Yet thousands of companies post their products, menus, or new movies on bill boards by the road side, beckoning us to get distracted for a moment. While billboards are an effective way to advertise, they are also the potential for an accident. Normally, on a traditional billboard, it only takes a matter of seconds to glance at the attention-grabbing advertisement. Yet when it comes to digital billboards, there is additional danger. These new electronic signs blink with a variety of ads or videos that can take a driver’s eyes off of the road ahead for a matter of seconds or minutes. When there are many of these digital billboards in a row, it only heightens the amount of distraction.

The New York Times writes that these high-tech billboards blend the allure of Times Square with the immediacy of the internet. Many of the billboards change images every eight to ten seconds, and the images normally move much like a commercial. Billboards can cycle through many images on one screen, holding a driver’s attention. They can even change depending on the time of day. Some of the boards show coffee in the morning, cheeseburger deals at lunch time, and the latest headlines when something groundbreaking occurs in the news. The billboards are not only flashy; they are also economic for owners. They can pack more advertisements into one place, bringing in more cash.

The billboard engineers say that there is no research proving that the digital boards heighten crashes, but critics say that the ever changing signs are like “television on a stick” and give drivers yet another distraction that they don’t need out on the road. Abby Dart, an executive director of Scenic Michigan, says that the boards are weapons of mass destruction and can be more distracting then a cell phone. This is because they not only avert the driver’s attention, but his or her eyes as well. Scenic Michigan is just one of the many state organizations that are out to stop the construction of these roadside signs. In this state, lawmakers recently held hearings about the bright billboards and considered imposing a two-year moratorium on erection of the signs in the state.

Michigan’s stand against the billboards has spread like a contagion, causing other states to voice their concerns as well. The Federal Highway Administration says that they are conducting a study about the billboards and will soon be able to see whether drivers look at the digital billboards and exactly how long the average motorist watches the flashing pictures. Currently, only about 2,000 of America’s 450,000 billboards are digitized. However, this is likely to change as more and more companies go for the futuristic and more appealing attractions. In the future, The New York Times estimates that almost 15 percent of all America’s billboards could go digital and the percentage may increase as the boards surge in popularity.

Most of the time the digital signs are used in heavy traffic areas, where a person who is too fixated on the sign has a change of ramming into the car in front or failing to notice the red traffic light head. The Federal Highway Administration currently rules that a digital billboard is legal as long as it is not too bright and the ad does not exceed four seconds. However, not all of the digitized commercials abide by this rule. While one study by Virginia Tech says that the billboards don’t distract drivers any more than regular boards do, many highway safety groups beg to differ. The Virginia Tech study was sponsored by the billboard industry, and even researchers admitted that they should study the subject further. Make sure to avoid looking at these bright, entertaining signs when out on the road in order to avoid a terrible accident.