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Editorial: Overpass screens are a matter of safety, not speech

If you travel the Veterans Memorial Tollway (I-355) with any frequency, you know how horrible the traffic can be during the rush.

And how much worse it can be if sign-carrying protesters are clamoring for the attention of oncoming traffic from either the Great Western Trail or Prairie Path bike/pedestrian overpasses near Glen Ellyn.

On Monday, transportation columnist Marni Pyke wrote about how DuPage County authorities recently put up green screening along the bridges to obscure protesters from motorists below.

As you might expect, protesters are, well, protesting.

Fred Schneider, a member of the group Overpasses for America, calls the move unconstitutional.

"They are trying to squash the First Amendment and free speech," he told Pyke.

For the county's part, spokeswoman Joan Olson said residents and motorists alike have complained about the protests.

"The screening was added as a safety measure to reduce distractions for drivers on I‐355," she said.

You'd be hard pressed to find support for abridgments of the First Amendment from us, but this is not about curtailing speech. It certainly is not about the largely conservative message being delivered. We'd be just as concerned if people on the bridge were decrying Donald Trump or global warming.

Rather, this is about the mode of delivery.

Signs, shouts and gestures that draw drivers' attention upward along a fast-moving expressway can both turn those drivers into hazards and distract them from the brake lights of others drawn to see the protest. Although the tollway and state police did not provide a specific accounting of accidents these protests have caused, the danger is obvious.

It is not unlike the Bigsby & Kruthers murals that greeted inbound Kennedy drivers in Chicago for years, occasionally with ominous effect. One giant painting of the multicolored hair of Dennis Rodman in 1996 was so alluring it had to be painted over after only few weeks because it had become a danger.

One activity is political speech, the other advertising, but the threat to public safety is the same.

In 2014, the state police agreed with Schneider that signs on a public right of way are perfectly legal. But what of the traffic implications?

"It does cause people to slow down and not pay attention," District 15 Lt. Bob Meeder said then. "There are accidents at that location, at that time."

A screen that can reduce the possibility of such accidents isn't hiding messages so much as assuring safety.

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