are bright roadside monitors a hazard?

This has all happened before.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/the-anti-neon-crusade-vancouvers-light-pollution-battle-from-another-era/article2318272/
But in 1958, the Community Arts Council launched a campaign urging a city hall crackdown. The CAC and its supporters argued the neon was a tacky distraction from the beauty of Vancouver’s natural landscape, and was in danger of altering the city’s reputation.

“That’s really at the heart of the anti-neon crusade,” says Ms. Seidl, the exhibition’s curator. “What kind of city do we want to be? How do we want to appear to the world? What are we saying about ourselves if we insist on saying it in this incredibly loud and glittery format? Where’s our dignity?”

The neon companies fought back, but the opposition gathered steam through the 1960s.

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D - every new visual tech fad causes this uproar.
But is there a legitimate basis for conern about safety?

http://www.planning.org/planning/open/mar/digitalbillboards.htm?print=true

The principal purpose of the 1965 Highway Beautification Act was to preserve scenic beauty by removing and regulating billboards along the nation's roadways. Today, however, the law is widely considered a failure. Not only did it fail to regulate traditional billboards; it promises to have little impact on the newest version, digital billboards.

But billboards are the only roadside objects that are both intentionally distracting and irrelevant to the task at hand. They are typically placed where driving conditions are challenging, and distraction can cause drivers to drift into another lane or fail to notice a car stopping ahead.

D - the article suggests fixes.

• Control the lighting. The light-emitting diodes typically used with digital signs must be turned up to be visible in daylight. But if the levels are not substantially reduced when it gets dark, drivers are inevitably attracted to the DBB's light from far away. Recent research in the Netherlands suggests that it is difficult to look away from a bright light source despite conscious efforts to do so. Moreover, the glare that may result makes it easy to miss critical cues such as pedestrians or the brake lights of vehicles that are ahead. Older drivers are particularly susceptible to the debilitating effects of glare.

D - I've had retina burn from them - they are THAT bright!

Lengthen dwell time. Messages on DBBs in the U.S. are typically changed every six to eight seconds. Such short "dwell times" yield more displays per day — more revenue for the billboard owner. But because it's the message change itself that captures the driver's attention, these quick changes increase the risk of distraction.

Keep it simple. Designing the message display to ensure minimum standards of legibility and readability is another way to limit distraction. Some controls are already in place, including a ban on displaying images that may be confused with official traffic control devices. But even these minimal controls are rarely enforced. Outside the U.S., the display of telephone numbers or website addresses is commonly banned. And some countries further minimize distraction by limiting the number of words and symbols allowed.

• Prohibit message sequencing. Using multiple, sequential messages to present a single ad is a common advertising technique. Each screen depicts only part of the whole message, keeping viewers' eyes glued to the billboard(s) to figure out what comes next. It's the modern equivalent of the iconic "Burma-Shave" signs from nearly a century ago.

D - I have not read any conclusive proof digital billboards are dangerous, but since the tech will keep improving and get used more, we may as well pass laws in anticipation right now.

D - I'm somebody that automatically tracks movement to the point of distraction. I need to shut off those lil' booth TVs in pubs to focus on the person across from me.