Insuring your up-to-date with Ad-ded danger on roads
As one of the cheapest motor insurers you will find, Insureyourmotor.co.uk always thought the name Insureyourmotor.co.uk should be up in lights - well now we might get the chance to tell motorists the country over about the cheapest motor insurance out there. And then those after cheap motor insurance will have the name Insureyourmotor.co.uk lodged in their brain. You know it makes sense. One of our journalists jumps on the advertising bandwagon..
Motoring organisations and terminal moaners with the 'BBC's Points Of View' address first in their 'favourite's box' are concerned about something. Again. So they're collaborating to do something about it. The 'it' being proposed roadside advertising; notably the type that isn't currently been slapped on the sides of an unemployed and decaying high-sided trailer units in a newly-loaded farmers field neighbouring the M4.
People in yellow jackets and hard hats with a propensity to sleep with their surgically-enhanced clipboards are foaming at their collective mouths about mutterings to turn roadside signs into advertising hoardings. They lie awake at night worrying that a motorist might be distracted by signs that flash badly-designed graphics of cheeseburgers that make 'Etch-A-Sketch' look sophisticated - when they're not telling the same driver to slow down, watch out for fog or take a break.
Apparently hundreds of S.I.D.'s - Speed Indicator Displays - have been installed across our green and pleasant land to remind motorists of the limit in which they should be travelling. Provided they haven't nodded off. Many are equipped with radars to measure the speed of approaching vehicles, and a few have the intelligence to flash up driver-friendly messages, such as 'don't forget to buy your mum some flowers on the way home Dave'. Whereas the rest just tell you to slow down.
That's until our European partners in Germany get in on the act. A company trading under the un-German name of DataCollect Traffic Systems has invented an S.I.D with a mind of its own. And a scrolling poster-like section to display advertisements to eager motorists bored of staring at the motorway in front of them.
A spokeswoman for the Local Authority Road Safety Officers' Association (or LARSO's - which, when said fast sounds like a relatively funny description of someone you don't like) took her head out of the Dark Ages long enough to comment; "S.I.D's are effective at calming traffic because drivers notice them. You don't want to add anything which would dilute that effect. We would be very surprised if any were installed by our members."
Perhaps she should be told they've put a man on the moon? Move with the times love!..some of us like to be reminded when we should eat, or what to watch on TV tonight, or what aftershave might make us attractive to women.
Adopting a more grown up attitude, DataCollect Traffic Systems hope that councils tempted by their new signs will use them to display random ad's to slow-moving traffic.
So expect to see an army of the little roadside seducers around junction 5 to junction 8 of the M6 very soon. Of course, the groups who do purchase the information points have to raise revenue fast given that they've just stumped up £4000 for the pleasure of telling their friends they've got an S.I.D.
Perhaps they can tell the roaming millions about us here at Insureyourmotor.co.uk, the one-stop for cheap motoring insurance for everyone. Now that's one message worth shouting about.
Date - 21/09/2006
