Several towns along Route 66 have restrictive zoning codes against neon signs — rules that seem nonconducive to the Mother Road experience.
One of the reasons some municipalities restrict the use of neon signs is traffic safety. Apparently there is concern that the vivid light of neon lighting will distract motorists and cause accidents.
I found a letter to the editor by John McGough to a newspaper in Chambersburg, Pa., that rebuts that reasoning quite nicely.
Examples like the Las Vegas Strip and Route 66 show that businesses have been promoting themselves through signs for decades. There hasn’t been any connection between roadside business signs and traffic safety issues.
People are exposed to downtown lights at Christmas, the fountain in the summer, painted gas pumps to promote the Lincoln Highway, etc. If electronic signs are a distraction, then surely all these are distractions as well.
Operating a vehicle in a safe manner will always be the responsibility of the operator. Taking your eyes off the road, eating in the car, using cell phones and smoking are all challenges to vehicle safety.
Regulating message signs is a poor attempt to fix a problem that doesn’t really exist.
The way I see it, the more neon, the better. I can’t get enough of it. I also can’t get enough of those classic old signs. Those plastic backlit ones so prevalent today are, well, to put it nicely, just a bit “homogenized.”
We have a nice stretch of neon along US-12 here in Fox Lake, Illinois.
If anything, all Route 66 towns should be promoting the use of neon.
I have been photographing neon for several years & have found various towns have different attitudes. I was told by a motel owner on Colfax Ave in Denver that Denver has a law that if a business with a neon sign is sold, the sign must be converted to non-neon.
The Salt Lake area has tons of neon, but the city council doesn’t like & they keep passing restrictions without grandfathering in old signs. I know of half a dozen signs that if they are damaged, cannot be repaired because they would be ‘new’ signs and wouldn’t fit into the current code.
I think some folks think that neon looks tacky, but don’t realize the historic significance of neon along some of our roadways.