State Considers Advertising on Amber Alerts

by Christine Pelisek

The Schwarzenegger administration is considering advertisements on freeway signs used for Amber Alerts and other emergencies.

The advertisements would be posted on 674 electronic roadside message boards according to the LA Times. The funds raised – estimated at millions - would go towards the financially strapped highway fund.

The Times reported that the plan was introduced by Clear Channel, which stands to make millions if the proposal goes through. Legislation has already been drafted with the involvement of state Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster), who drafted the bill that brought the Amber Alert system to California. According to the Times, the Schwarzenegger administration “touted the idea” in a letter to the U.S. Transportation Secretary.

The proposal would be up for bid and the winner would replace the state's old emergency message signs with new flashy video screens that would show advertisements when it wasn’t posting Amber Alerts.

The proposal has raised the ire of traffic safety activists who believe that the advertisements would be too distracting to drivers.

"This proposal recklessly ignores issues of traffic safety, visual blight, and the ongoing privatization of public space by allowing our visual environment to be filled with commercial messages," says Dennis Hathaway, president of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight. "Those signs were intended to give motorists important information about highway conditions and emergencies, not inducements to buy the latest products and services. No matter how badly the state needs revenue, this is absolutely the wrong way to go about raising it."

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