Clear Channel wants quicker ad switches on its digital billboards, but critics fear they'll distract drivers

Clear Channel wants to get more money out of its digital billboards by changing messages every six seconds instead of every minute.

But Pinellas County officials worry that would result in more traffic crashes.

Rapid ad switches would be a dangerous driving distraction, say county officials and critics with the billboard opposition group Scenic Pinellas. They also fear Las Vegas-style streets as more businesses take their signs digital in future years.

There are currently 328 billboards in Pinellas County, including five digital signs.

At Clear Channel's urging, the County Commission will debate the ad switching time during an Oct. 27 workshop — the latest chapter in Pinellas and Tampa Bay's saga of billboard battles.

Tampa has its own fight brewing over whether to allow digital billboards; Hillsborough County already does. Most cities in Pinellas ban fully digital billboards, including St. Petersburg. Pasco County also prohibits them.

Pinellas banned billboards on all but a few busy highways in unincorporated areas in 1992. Billboard companies later were given decades to phase out signs and loopholes to add new ones.

"I just see this as they're going to keep coming back every several years, like kids at a candy store," said veteran billboard fighter Bill Jonson of Clearwater, chairman of Scenic Pinellas.

An April study for the Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials warned that any distraction that captures a driver's attention for more than two seconds increases the crash risk.

Pinellas should at least wait for a Federal Highway Administration study on the effects of electronic signs due in 2010, said senior assistant county attorney David Sadowsky and public works director Pete Yauch.

"We're finding out about texting and cell phones and what that does to the driving task. We believe digital billboards can do the same thing," Yauch said.

Tom O'Neil, vice president of Clear Channel Outdoor, deferred comment Tuesday to lobbyist Todd Pressman.

In advertising materials, Clear Channel says it has 13 digital billboards in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties — locations it lists as dynamic ad spaces costing $2,000 and up. The company installed the digital signs in 2007 as a new line of business. They cost $500,000 each, Pressman said.

There are five in Pinellas, including several under the Florida Department of Transportation's purview, such as the digital billboard at U.S. 19 near 66th Street. Its messages changed Tuesday roughly every six seconds, the duration allowed by the state.

This summer, Clear Channel proposed allowing 20 of the 328 billboards in Pinellas to have new messages every six seconds. The signs would have to be 2,500 feet apart.

"To call it Las Vegas, personally I think it is more than a stretch of the imagination," Pressman said.

He noted other states, such as Virginia, find no link between crashes and digital billboards, nor do some studies supported by the billboard industry. Digital billboards also can be used in emergencies, such as amber alerts.

"I think in the case of the staff, they've been shoot first, ask questions later," Pressman said, saying the public shouldn't worry.

That message hasn't swayed County Commissioner John Morroni, who voted for the 2003 agreement with Clear Channel that gave the company until 2042 to remove all billboards.

"To have 10 messages or six messages, and people trying to focus on a sign instead of driving, I think that's dangerous," Morroni said.

David DeCamp can be reached at ddecamp@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8779.