Just when you thought advertisements couldn't get more intrusive, one shows up in a parked car outside your apartment. At least that's what happened to one renter when an ultra-illuminated LED advertisement began flashing outside of their window one night — from a neighbor's car.
On the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, the renter posted a photo of the car equipped with an outward-facing LED screen in its passenger window.
"A car with advertising screens in the window is parked in front of my flat," the Redditor captioned the photo.
Fellow Reddit users were also disturbed by the intrusive — and polluting — guerrilla advertising tactic.
"Oh, hell no!" one commenter simply wrote.
"How to get your car keyed — 100% success-rate," another commenter added sarcastically.
Similar mobile LED advertisements have unfortunately been gaining popularity in recent years, causing a great deal of controversy and driver frustration. Often, however, the advertisements are on large box trucks, not passenger vehicles.
While there are obvious safety concerns with the ultra-illuminated screens facing fellow drivers, there are also environmental concerns with these mobile LED ads. Running continuous power to an LED mobile advertisement burns gallons of dirty fuel unnecessarily. Plus, these illuminated advertisements are a textbook source of light pollution — the excessive use of artificial light that illuminates the night sky, as explained by DarkSky International.
The National Park Service reports light pollution is especially harmful to insects and wildlife, confusing natural instincts and circadian rhythms. But light pollution also harms humans, contributing to a wide range of negative health impacts, according to DarkSky.
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Yes — always 💯 Adding even more frustration to the situation is the fact that such advertising often promotes overconsumption, a core cause of planet-warming pollution. Often, it can feel like ads promoting more and more stuff are inescapable — and maybe they are if LED advertisements are now in passenger car windows.
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While there are laws dictating how bright roadside billboards can be due to their distracting nature, per the Drive, these laws tend to be underenforced. Mobile billboards, however, skirt current laws entirely by being constantly on the move. Yet, illegally bright billboards of any kind can always be reported to the local or state highway department — and likely should be for the safety of drivers and the future of the planet.
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