Tantala Associates (Philadelphia) and the Outdoor Advertising Assn. of America (OAAA) have unveiled yet more evidence that digital billboards don’t cause traffic accidents. The new Tantala study examined eight years of law-enforcement records that documented 35,000 traffic accidents on state and local roads around Reading, PA, to determine accident rates near 26 digital billboards.
As in the previous three, similar, Tantala studies (in Cleveland, OH; Rochester, MN; and Albuquerque, NM), the consulting-engineering firm analyzed location, time of day, and the direction and speed of vehicles involved in each accident on stretches of road where digital billboards are visible, as well as accidents elsewhere. For the first time, the Empirical Bayes Method predictive tool was used to determine if accidents near digital billboards are inconsistent with what is statistically predicted. The answer: Digital billboards are “safety neutral.”
The Foundation for Outdoor Advertising Research and Education (FOARE), a 501 (c)(3) charitable foundation that fosters research and education on critically important issues that affect the future of the outdoor-advertising industry, commissioned the Tantala report. Reading was chosen because it’s also the site of a federal, human-factors study on the effect of digital billboards on driver behavior.
Previous studies
In Cleveland, Tantala reviewed police records for 60,000 traffic accidents taking place in the county over an eight-year period, comparing accident rates from a four-year period before digital billboards were installed with the four-year period following their installation. In Rochester, Tantala reviewed police records documenting 18,000 traffic accidents that took place within a mile of digital billboards over a five-year period, and in Albuquerque, it reviewed police records documenting traffic accidents that took place within a mile of 17 digital billboards over a seven-year period. The studies showed no statistical correlation between digital billboards and accidents.
Around the same time as the first Tantala study, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) completed a survey about the effects of signs on drivers. Conducted by the Center for Automotive Safety Research at VTTI, the study observed measures like eye-glance patterns, speed maintenance and lane-keeping, and found no substantial changes in behavior patterns in the presence of digital signage. Thirty-six participants, unaware of the underlying purpose of the study, drove an instrumented vehicle with no researcher present. The participants represented a range of age, gender, ethnicity, income and education levels. The route was a 35-mile loop-route in Charlotte, North Carolina, consisting of both interstate and surface streets. A total of 30 billboards, six comparison sites and six baseline sites were analyzed in terms of nine, eye-glance measures and two driving performance measures.