Dear Editor:
I congratulate the City of New Westminster on selecting what is quite possibly the worst place to erect a digital advertising sign.
I refer to the recent placement of a large electronic billboard in the small sliver of New Westminster city land located south of Highway 91.
This sign is placed in the middle of a fairly tight radius corner for a highway and is extremely distracting.
It is one thing to add digital advertising signage with its inherent distraction alongside a straightaway, yet quite another where drivers are engaged in a taxing driving maneuover such as a highway speed turn.
Should a driver avert their eyes for long enough to actually read the sign they face the grave risk of losing concentration and veering into another lane or into backed up traffic ahead in the curve.
The engineers who signed off on this should be ashamed of themselves.
There are of course tradeoffs in raising revenue, but it should never be accomplished in such a greedy and careless manner as this sign demonstrates.
I advise the City of New Westminster to turn this sign off and remove it before the inevitable occurs. As this sign is located in an extreme corner of New Westminster - any precipitant collisions will be tasked to Richmond or Delta - not New Westminster to attend to.
The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, along with any parties looking to assign blame for collisions, will no doubt blame the city, at least in part, for the placement of this sign as a contributing factor in such collisions.
I recommend the City of New Westminster have serious discourse regarding the future of this sign before there is an injury or fatality and someone decides to point fingers at what is very likely to be or appear to be a causal factor in any collision.
Clarence Taylor, via email
