Sign owner says digital billboards can be distracting

Craig Heard, owner of Gateway Outdoor Advertising in Michigan, said he knows digital billboards can distract drivers.  "I know, myself, driving down the highway and all the sudden the sign changes, your eye catches it, no doubt," Heard said.

The billboard industry says digital billboards pose no safety hazard and has paid for their own studies to back that up.  Yet at the same time they promote billboards as the "one media that is truly unavoidable." 

Considering that, and knowing that our peripheral vision is particularly sensitive to light and motion, and knowing that any glance away from the road for more than two seconds greatly increases the risk of a crash or near-crash, it seems counterintuitive to say that digital billboards pose no safety hazard.