MINNEAPOLIS – A study in the academic journal Science found that electronic message boards that display the current highway death toll may result in more accidents, rather than reduce them. The counter-intuitive finding was drawn from data in Texas. Electronic boards displayed fatality count messages one week each month. Joshua Madsen, of the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota, a co-author of the study, said there were more crashes during the week with fatality messaging. The study extrapolated that fatality messages caused an additional 2,600 crashes and 16 deaths per year in Texas.
