MONTREAL, Que. — Mobile billboards have caught the eye of Montreal’s city hall, which is now promising to clamp down on the ad-laden flatbeds in the near future.

“They seem to be invading our environment and we’re not sure that’s such a good thing,” Sylvie Lebeuf of
Montreal’s economic and urban development department tells local media. “They are very distracting and that’s dangerous.”

Mounted on flatbed trucks, 20 feet long panels — some rotating, some not — blanket downtown streets at hauling their message to an audience trapped in rush hour traffic.

Stephane Gauvin is the president of Impact Media, whose billboards rotate on the back of seven trucks, says the ads are here to stay.

“It’s a matter of freedom of expression. Besides, there are so many things in Montreal to distract a driver’s attention and at the speed we’re traveling, it’s the pedestrians who are distracted, not the cars.”