07-12-07 Planning Comm. Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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Meeting of June 14, 2007 Page 11 Subject: Dynamic Signs result in accidents. That is enough to justify regulation. Other things may also cause distractions, but the city has no control over them. Moreover, the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that governments need not choose between attacking all facets of a problem (or none at all). The city has the ability to regulate where it can to minimize the amount of driver distractions. 11. An "8 second hold time is appropriate and in line with Federal and State safety studies." Response: Since December the City, its consultants, and its counsel have been gathering studies that inform the regulation of dynamic signs. Because Mr. Brown's assertion was not borne out by the State and Federal studies that had been collected thus far, we requested Mr. Brown to provide those studies to us. What he provided to us, while voluminous, did not include any Federal and State safety studies that show that an eight-second hold time is appropriate. • He referenced a 1980 safety study and a 2001 research review performed by or for the Federal Highway Administration. While those documents note that the data was not conclusive when those reports were issued and that there would be value in further research, they provide far more support for the City's position than for Mr. Brown's position (that "there was no correlation between the usage of the signs and traffic safety."). That is why the City (and, in turn, Judge Zimmerman in District Court) relied on each of those documents in the pending civil action, where the Court allowed a substantially longer "hold time" (of one hour) than would be allowed under the proposed amendments. • He has also provided two links to web pages on the site of the Small Business Administration, the contents of which he describes as "that organization's findings regarding EMC safety concerns." These do not appear to be the "findings" of any agency, let alone of an agency with special expertise in traffic safety. The content on the SBA's web pages appears to have been provided by "The Signage Foundation for Communication Excellence, Inc.". an organization that is a joint enterprise between sign industry organizations and the SBA. The purpose of those pages, according to the Foundation's webpage, was "to acquaint small business with the value of on-premise signage." While the page regarding safety cites the 1980 Wachtel and Netherton study, the actual text of that study undermines the assertions on the page, particularly when that study is viewed as a whole. The only other study referenced by the Foundation on the page regarding safety was written by a former FHWA official, Richard Schwab. Further investigation shows that the Schwab report was done for the