The Word

We had been favorably impressed with the lack of billboards when we drove through Germany’s autobahns and highways. Yet I have been told that 85% of all travelers in the United States get their driving information from billboards. That was from a notice I saw. Where? On a billboard, of course; where else could you ever see such a thing? Clearly, the Germans have found better ways to provide roadside information, and it obviously works if you can drive around over there and don’t even speak the language, and stil not get lost, and SEE the scenery!

At any rate, coming back up I-75 through Florida, during long idle moments driving along, I decided to conduct a very unscientific experiment about billboards. Totally at random, during a boring ten mile stretch, I counted the billboards I saw. Here’s what I found: There were 310. That figures out to 31 a mile or about one every 170 ft, which at 70 MPH (speed limit) is a billboard every 1.7 seconds. Eighty-nine of them, or 29% provided what could be called information, such as “McDonald’s ahead” and there was an advertisement for the food they offered. Even those 89 billboards locations were also mentioned in the standard Interstate Information Signs that are located before every off-ramp.The remaining 221 (71%) of them seemed to be impulse shopping ads - very much like what you might find at in American supermarket aisles: “Condo Real Estate - Office next Exit.”, “Harley-Davidson Accessories - Next Exit!”, “Cold Beer at XCVBDX”s service station, next exit, then right.” “We Bare All, Come See our Girls”, “Ice cold beer next exit!’, “Pleasure Horses “, “Adult Toys - Come See Our Wide Selection - Next Exit!” , “Cold Beer, Gas, Subs - Get Off Now!”, “Nude Dancing - This Exit!”

Since each billboard contained about 8 readable words, we were exposed to about 4 words each seconds or 240 words every minute. If an average page in an average book is about 250 words, then we are basically exposed to a "page" of words on our billboards every minute we drive on a highway like this one. In an 8 hour trip then we could all read a 500+ page book - and we not only COULD read that kind of a book, let’s face it, we all DO read that kind of a book whenever we travel America’s highways. And this is through the open spaces of rural Florida - what is downtown Atlanta like? Well, I don’t know. Personally, I always drive through THERE with my eyes closed.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.