When every stretch of highway in America looks like Times Square, it will be too late to worry about the driver distractions caused by electronic billboards.

Driving Rapid City's main thoroughfares, billboards come into view most everywhere.

By the city's latest count, there are 248 billboards within city limits, in parking lots, railroad right-of-way, open spaces.

A South Dakota company is keeping close tabs on emerging efforts to ban and regulate digital billboards.

Brookings' Daktronics is one of the country's largest producers of digital signs and billboards and employs two people whose sole job responsibility is "signage legislation."

This morning, a speaker named Valentina Collins said enough is enough when it comes to billboards.

"These billboards do the opposite of revitalization. Nobody wants to see them except the people who benefit from them," Collins said.

Dr. John Lee of the University of Wisconsin said that billboards can be a cause of motorist distraction outside of vehicles. Dr. Lee also said that while the issue of digital billboard distraction is an active topic of FHWA research, prior studies on the issue have found that they can be a source of distraction.