Billboard plays porn on Michigan interstate. It’s not as rare as you’d think
Drivers on an interstate in Michigan got quite the show as they passed through Auburn Hills late Saturday evening.
It was just after 11 p.m. when drivers in the nourthbound lanes of I-75 saw something more than a little unusual on a nearby billboard: pornography, WDIV reported.
“I was just looking up at it and I was like, ‘Huh, oh, wow. That’s porn,’” driver Chuck McMahon told the news outlet.
It didn’t take long for drivers to call 911 to alert police to the video, which played for an unknown amount of time, WXYZ reported.
The following video is not graphic.
“You could kind of see people started to brake a lot behind me, cause I think they were doing the same thing, like a double take,” Dr. Jesse Kammo, another driver, told the news outlet. “I assumed someone had hacked it right away.”
Police sent officers to the scene then contacted Triple Properties, the billboard’s operators, to shut off the display, the Detroit Free Press reported.
It’s still unknown if the billboard was hacked or if the video was played by a company employee, but police say it’s possible that charges could be filed, according to the news outlet.
While Lt. Ryan Gagnon says he’s “never seen anything like it,” roadside porn displays are more common than you might think.
In May 2015, an electronic billboard in Atlanta displayed a number of sexually explicit images, WSBTV reported. Drivers called to express their concern, with one saying, “Not actually an emergency; it’s just totally disgusting.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation before a group of hackers claimed responsibility for the incident, USA Today reported.
In 2016, a 24-year-old IT analyst was arrested after officials say he hacked into an electronic billboard in Jakarta, Indonesia, and streamed a pornographic video because he was “bored in traffic,” the Daily Mail reported. He faced at least six years in prison, NPR reported.
Commuters in Perth, Australia, faced a similar issue when the homepage of pornography website PornHub was projected on an electronic information display in 2018, ABC News reported. The screen, located in a high-traffic pedestrian area, was quickly switched off, with officials saying the screen had been “compromised.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2019 at 11:09 AM with the headline "Billboard plays porn on Michigan interstate. It’s not as rare as you’d think."