June 23rd, 2003
Taxi Trap
By Boston Globe
Editorial
One more scrap of relative solitude—the back seat of a taxicab—is being invaded by commercial blah-blah. It has happened in New York, Las Vegas, and Chicago, and now a pilot program has brought the talking taxi to Boston. The effort is still mercifully small—only 10 of the city’s 1,825 cabs have the video screens sold by Rudolph Krutous, president of Auto Club Boston, an association of independent taxi owners and drivers.
So the chances are good that a person will not get a cab with a television built into the back of the driver’s seat that plays a continuous loop of commercials interspersed with historical and tourist information and a welcome from Mayor Menino.
But Krutous says he hopes to have 100 installed by the end of the year, and a New York company, Global Vision Interactive Inc., has a contract with the Boston Cab company to install 100 touch-controlled computer screens. The computers are even more diabolical than the Krutous model, for if a rider choses not to interact with the beast by punching up information on movies, restaurants, museums, and shopping, it will just keep running ads.
Both systems have volume control, but the video can’t be clicked off. Once again a person is trapped by marketers who think of human beings as receptacles for the endless pitch.
The television blaring ‘’infomercials’’ has invaded doctors’ offices, waiting rooms, classrooms, gas stations, airports, and buses.
‘’This is the age of forced watching,’’ growls Gary Ruskin, head of Commercial Alert, a national advocacy group pressing for the citizen’s right to enjoy silence.
Mark Cohen, director of licensing for the Boston Police Department, says public and cabdriver reaction over the coming year will determine whether the systems stay. He adds that he considers such technology a low priority compared with making cabs cleaner and making sure drivers can speak English.
It would be nice if a healthy percentage of the ad revenue collected by Auto Club Boston and Global Vision went into taxi maintenance—riders bouncing along on bad springs might even watch the ad if they knew it would help fix the car.
But so far the plans are about selling time and delivering captive consumers, although marketers of the systems like to talk about entertainment value.
‘’It can be very boring sitting in a taxi in the rain with nothing to do,’’ says James Piccione, president of Global Vision.
It can also be peaceful in an urban sort of way—a place to contemplate the day, watch the streetscape, talk to a friend, close one’s eyes, or hold hands with a date. Taxi companies would be smart to sell that respite the way Amtrak does, offering riders a ‘’quiet car’’ instead of assaulting them with more noise.