In an effort to raise revenue in hard times, many states are looking at new ways to make money without raising taxes.

Pennsylvania, in league with California and Florida, thinks it would be dandy to sell advertising on electronic highway signs.

Such advertising could generate as much as $150 million annually for each state.

Many of the 370 electronic signs that display traffic and safety notices and emergency alerts in Pennsylvania don't provide a real service much of the time anyway, so what's the harm?

None, according to the states that want to advertise.

Plenty, according to opponents who say the blinking billboards would become another distraction for motorists.

We side with the opponents. Pennsylvanians don't need more distractions on their roads.

The signs would work much like the digital billboards currently operating on the Manheim Pike and at hundreds of other locations.

Private companies would upgrade and maintain the electronic signs.

The states are asking the Federal Highway Administration to waive several of its regulations that prohibit advertisements on overhead and roadside changeable signs.

Advocates cite a 2007 Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study that claimed the typical person glances at such a sign for a second &tstr; about the amount of time a driver looks at any other business sign.

But an association of state highway and transportation officials concluded that the signs do distract drivers.

The Federal Highway Administration is researching the signs, with a report due at the end of the summer.

The federal government would have to change current traffic regulations that prohibit such signs. Pennsylvania law also prohibits blinking signs and would have to be changed.

Plenty of people oppose this idea, which was floated by California and turned down by the FHA in 2008.

Fairley Mahlum, a spokeswoman for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, believes the signs would be a definite distraction, especially if they used bright LED lights.

Mary Tracy, the president of Scenic America, a non-profit organization designed to preserve roadside scenery, said blinking signage would be a distraction much like cell phones.

"There is a growing and sound body of scientific evidence that has confirmed the intuitive notion that a digital billboard, essentially a giant TV on a stick, poses an unnecessary safety risk to drivers," she said.

And that brings up the other negative about electronic advertising. Not only would it be distracting, it would be unsightly.

Forty-five years ago, Congress adopted Lady Bird Johnson's Highway Beautification Act. The idea was to remove billboards from the nation's highways.

The billboard lobby found loopholes in the law from the very beginning, and there are more billboards now than there were in 1965.

But the original idea was correct.

Drivers should keep their eyes on the road and the countryside along the way.

Billboard advertising discourages concentration as it detracts from the beauty of the natural environment.

Blinking billboard advertising would be worse because it would be more insistent. It's difficult to ignore images that change every eight seconds &tstr; the amount of time between ads proposed by the three states.

Pennsylvania needs more money for roads and bridges. This would be be one way to obtain it.

There are other ways that would not add to driver distraction and vehicular accidents and roadside uglification.