Słuchanie: zadanie 2

Speaker 1
It’s obvious that advertisers want to rent land to put up billboards in close proximity to public roads. Drivers can read them and get influenced by the images and slogans, which, in turn, make them buy the advertised goods. But, in my opinion, strange things can happen, all within the law, when the government needs the land for a public purpose. For instance, the replacement of the Lafayette Bridge in St. Paul, Minnesota, required a number of billboards to be taken down. (D)  The state authorities settled with the billboard owners and paid them substantial damages from public funds.  It’s not right, in my opinion.

Speaker 2
I consider billboards very useful. I get stuck in traffic jams for about an hour on my way to work and back home. Billboards help me overcome boredom and their illumination keeps me awake behind the wheel after dark. It’s true that some of them show things I’m not interested in at all, but they also present important issues that can raise our awareness. (C)  The message on one billboard stuck in my mind so powerfully that I switched to LED lighting and stopped leaving the bulbs turned on in an empty room .

Speaker 3
Last week I experienced something I had read about in a study done by a Swedish research team. They found that billboards took drivers’ eyes off the motorways for significant periods of time, posing a potential threat for everyone on the road. (E)  I myself got distracted by flashy lights on a billboard inviting people to Las Vegas hotels and smashed my classy Cadillac to pieces.  What happened in Sweden is that the government ordered an opinion poll among its citizens, and as a result, they took the decision to remove all adverts along the roads. I wonder whether anybody cares about the impact of billboards on drivers in our country. Speaker 4 I’m a professional driver so I’m exposed to billboards day and night. Some can even have an educational impact, like those pointing to the consequences of reckless driving. However, there is one thing that irritates me. I read that there are almost 700,000 billboards on federal roads and the number is growing. But only 450,000 of them are permitted to be there. It has become a habit to put up billboards illegally, which means substantial loss of income from property tax for local authorities.

Speaker 4
I’m a professional driver so I’m exposed to billboards day and night. Some can even have an educational impact, like those pointing to the consequences of reckless driving. However, there is one thing that irritates me. (A)  I read that there are almost 700,000 billboards on federal roads and the number is growing. But only 450,000 of them are permitted to be there. It has become a habit to put up billboards illegally, which means substantial loss of income from property tax for local authorities .