| 因巴士廣告廣播引致的身心傷害，無可估計
因巴士廣告廣播引致的經濟損失，每一名乘客可達
$2,160,000
One study concludes:
"Reliable estimates of the direct costs due to ill-health
from noise pollution put this figure at as much as 2% of the gross
domestic product of a country.
"The psychological and
social cost is difficult to assess."
Our Rough Estimate
If one spend 2 hours per day on a bus, being forced to listening
to advertisements and broadcasts, one would have lost close to 9%
of his day. If one lives to be 80 years old, one's life would have
been cut short by 7.2 years as a result of the bus companies' actions.
If one earns HK$300,000 per year, the bus companies would have
ripped its passengers off by HK$2,160,000 per passenger life, that
is more than 2 million dollars.
If one believe in bus companies' claim that everyday millions have
seen their advertisement, (take 1 million for example), this will
represent a loss of life time of 7,200,000 years of human life time
and an economic loss of HK$2,160,000,000,000.
If one takes into account losses from other aspects such as psychological,
health and and lost opportunities (passengers would have the option
to perform other activities such as study, meditate, think, read...),
the monetary loss would be astronomical.
Our view: Roadshow is basically a
front for generating money from running advertisement on public
buses.
 Audience
receives benefits (in terms of free emails, cyber-money...) when
they agree to be bombarded by advertisements when they surf the
internet. Those bus companies have the audacity to pocket the benefits
ripped off from the very passengers and channeled them to another
companies, eg Roadshow.
(The government and the Company have responded by saying that revenue
from Roadshow would be used to finance development of future projects
and to lower bus fares.)
Our response: only a naive and immature government
would buy into such sweet talk.
By forcing passengers to watch and listen to advertisements
in order to generate money to finance development of future projects
of the bus companies would pose difficulties, besides the legal,
ethical, medical and psychological challenges that we will be presenting.
Fisrt, the company would have to agree to accepting passengers
as their investors as a result of the financing activities. In other
words, passnegers must be given the option to join in as shareholders
of the bus companies.
Second, there is no legal or contractual grounding that we could
see that bus companies have the obligation to lower the fare as
a result of the increase in revenue from such shows.
We therefore ask the Government to look into their accounting
practices and to ensure that grants and privileges given by the
government are fully accounted for.
We would like to draw the government's attention to this
particular practice area in light of revelation of various creative
accounting techniques as a result of Enron's case.
More will follow....
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