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October 12, 2005
Highway distraction
Last night driving home on the 10 I happened to end up behind a Shopper Shuttle minivan. What you can't see on their snazzy press photos is that their vans have a scrolling LED marquee at the top of the rear windshield. So suddenly, instead of watching the road, I realized that I was instinctively reading the little red words that were gliding across my field of vision. "Shop with us the easy way...call 310-..." etc. When I realized how mesmerized I was, I got freaked out and tried to look anywhere else. Is a display like this legal? It's so much more distracting than any still billboard on a bus. I know I'm easily distracted by shiny visual displays, so perhaps this is an overreaction. It just seemed like the combination of the eye-level marquee directly in front of the driver (unlike electronic marquees high on the sides of buses) and lettering with the same hue and luminosity of brake lights was pushing it.
Posted by rosenblj at October 12, 2005 11:05 AM
Comments
Great question Jess - hopefully we can increase the amount of auto-pilot driving at the same time these distractions grow. I think ProjectCAR raised some of these concerns!
Posted by: Justin Hall ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/rosenblj/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 12, 2005 08:32 PM
http://interactive.usc.edu/projects/mobile/20050814-projectcar.php
Posted by: Justin Hall at October 12, 2005 08:33 PM
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