Driver shocked after spotting obnoxious vehicle causing unsafe conditions: 'This should be illegal'

It's already worrisome enough that too many drivers are staring at their phones while driving. Now add to those worries that drivers are getting transfixed by bright, moving ads mounted on trucks advertising — you guessed it — new phones.

A Redditor shared the frustrating sight to the r/Anticonsumption subreddit with photos of the three-sided moving T-Mobile billboard on a highway.

In their post, they mocked the advertising mind behind it and their apparent thought process: "Never mind how unsafe this is. We need to waste a bunch of fossil fuels so this truck can be an electronic billboard on all three sides."

Both critiques of this sort of advertisement are spot-on. There's no question that at night a very bright, moving advertisement poses a hazard to drivers. It also undoubtedly wastes gas or electricity to have the display running at all hours of the night.

There's also the problematic nature of a world where advertising is becoming completely unavoidable. Beachgoers have had their time disturbed by unwanted commercials. When you go to fill up your gas, good luck getting a pump or gas station cooler not push products on you.

The roads are getting dotted increasingly with these sorts of ads, so this is far from an isolated incident. All of it serves to encourage people to buy things that they don't need or, in this case, upgrade their phones before they really should. 

That can add up to more e-waste and more resource-intensive shipping and production. Researchers have also found that advertising makes consumers increasingly unhappy.

Commenters on Reddit were angered by the original poster's sighting and looking for action against it.

One demanded: "This should be illegal!"

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"Agreed," the OP said. "It's gotta cause accidents because those lights are so bright."

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