FORGIVE OUR SCEPTICISM, but a recent study conducted by the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB) has found that not only is roadside advertising not distracting, “it can actually help improve driver performance” (our emphasis).
Pardon?
Surely anything that takes your attention away from what is happening on the road around you must reduce attention and increase risk? Wasn’t that the argument used by various councils to ban cars being parked on roadsides with “for sale” signs in the windows?
Well, not according to this study. Perhaps there’s a clue in the fact that it was “conducted by the ARRB on behalf of outdoor Media Association”.
The study measured vehicles movement at two complex intersections in Queensland, one at the Gold Coast and the other at Gladstone.
The intersections were filmed several times over a 24-hour period for four weeks without any signage as well as in the presence of an outdoor digital billboard to gauge the effect on safety. The billboards were active for several different dwell times, from eight to 30 seconds.
Researchers then analysed the two key indicators of distraction known to increase the chances of an accident – lane drift and stopping over the line at an intersection.
The results found lane drift unaffected or results improved when signage was displayed. Not stopping correctly by stopping over the line improved in all but one case. No crashes were recorded.
“This study showed it is sometimes possible for a digital sign at an intersection to operate with no negative impact on driver performance and, in some cases, to improve it,” said ARRB principal researcher Dr Paul Roberts.
Charmaine Moldrich, CEO of OMA which represents Australia’s outdoor media display companies, said the industry was committed to ensuring its signs were safe.
“We were already confident that well-designed digital out-of-home advertising were (sic) safe, but we were surprised to learn that our signs can actually help improve driver performance, probably because they encourage drivers to look up from in-car distractions,” she said.
To us at seniordriveraus that sounds like swapping one distraction for another.
Having worked in advertising for many years and dealt with research results, it is our experience that results can be interpreted in many different ways, from the way the questions are framed to the way the data is interpreted.
From personal experience, it is obvious that drivers are often distracted by many things, including roadside advertising. How often have you sat behind a car after the lights have changed because the driver is too busy reading an outdoor poster, or an ad on a bus side? Of course, there are far more distractions for drivers than outdoor advertising, but the results of this study are more than a little difficult to take seriously.