Streetsblog USA: Distracting Roadside Safety Billboards May Cause 17K Crashes A Year
USA.Streetsblog.org reports on the troubling findings of a recent study on dynamic billboards. The study, which was published in the April edition of Science, examines how road signs reminding drivers to "dive safe" may actually be causing crashes because they’re too distracting
"A new Science Magazine analysis of a Texas campaign found that driving passed a dynamic billboard that displays the number of people killed that year on Lone Star State roads increased a motorists’ chance of being involved a crash soon thereafter by about 4.5 percent, even when controlling for factors like the time of day, day of the week, whether or not it was a holiday, and the weather."
This study, coauthored by Jonathan D. Hall and Joshua M. Madsen, is a good reminder that "good intentions don't always lead to good outcomes."
Read the full Streetsblog article here.
Read the full study "Can behavioral interventions be too salient? Evidence from traffic safety messages." here
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