Court Opinion

ID: 9769100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:31:34.280712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:54.482640
License: Public Domain

GRAVES, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The regulation has a reasonable relation to highway safety. There are psychological and physiological distinctions between the messages on this highway electronic verbal message sign that uses electric lights and movable parts to display messages in words, numbers, or symbols, and when it does so, it changes the messages at selected intervals of time by using a message changing mechanism. In this particular case the sign can be operated in a flashing manner or a scrolling manner.
These signs are designed to distract fast moving motorists on interstate highways and to entreat them to divert to off highway premises for the purposes of making sales. Along with the distractions are such human factors as response time, information processing, and brain overload. Signs with a commercial message elicit a conditioned response. Advertising is premised on such conditioned responses. The appellant has invested thousands of dollars in this sign for purposes of advertising. Time, temperature, and weather information are content neutral and elicit no response requiring diversion from the highway.
STEPHENS, C.J., joins in this dissent.