Do Roadside Billboards Affect A Person's Driving Abilities?

Researchers from the University of Alberta have found that the language and images used on roadside billboards cause an emotional distraction and affect a person's driving abilities.

Roadside billboards affect a person's driving abilities and whether this is negative or positive depends on the language and imagery used on the billboard, says a researcher from the University of Alberta.

For the study, participants drove through one of three scenarios that exposed them to 20 billboards on the course; each billboard contained blocks of words that were positive, negative or neutral in nature. They were also tested for responses by having to push a button on the steering wheel when they encountered a target word.

"Studies have shown that when subjects see an emotional stimulus as opposed to a neutral one, they're slower in making reaction time responses and they're slower when doing a visual search," said Lead study author Michelle Chan. "I wanted to see whether the results would carry over in driving -- would we also find more distracted performance in driving? -- and we did see that."

It was found that words filled with emotion affected the driver's ability to focus, which could be dangerous while driving in real conditions. Words that had a negative intonation made drivers slow down and their minds wandered off making them stray off-lane. When participants crossed billboards that had positive words on them, they tended to speed up.

"There have been studies showing that when you're positively stimulated, your attention broadens, so you perform better when you're in a happy mood," said Chan. "In my results, we also saw that when we looked at the reaction-time data in response to target words, participants actually responded faster in the positive block than in the negative block."

Chan sums up the study by saying while in Australia they have strict billboard criteria, the case is not so in America. In Las Vegas, drivers pass through boards that have a lot of profanity and "really graphic anti-smoking billboards."

According to Chan, drivers should take responsibility for their actions while driving even if it means reducing the amount of listening to the radio or talking they do while driving.