Didi Chuxing, China’s major ride-hailing service company, has resumed its Hitch services on May 19, with major functions undergoing a redesign, aimed at ensuring the safety of passengers. The hitch service has been halted since May 12 10pm-6am for a safety overhaul after the alleged murder of a passenger by her Didi hitch driver.
The company outlined the phase-one safety enhancement plans for Didi Hitch and all Didi mobility services, with the measures for Hitch being fully implemented before the Hitch service resumes, while measures for all Didi mobility services will be fully implemented by May 31st 2018.
Safety-enhanced measures for Didi Hitch:
All personalized tags and rating features that are part of the Hitch service being taken down; Personal information and profile pictures of passengers and car-owners only visible to the individual himself or herself; Driver facial recognition being made compulsory for every Hitch trip to minimize the risk of unapproved account use.
Safety-enhanced measures for all mobile services:
Besides vetting the drivers through verification of personal ID, driver license and vehicle registration certificate, a Zero Tolerance policy will be implemented to ensure the driver-vehicle match. At the same time, Didi will expedite the full implementation of real-name registration across all mobility services.
The Emergency Help function will be redesigned and be more prominently displayed in the app interface. Currently, once the Emergency Help button is clicked, a real-time audio recording will start; a DiDi special customer service representative will start monitoring immediately and call back to follow up, and the trip information will be automatically shared with users’ emergency contacts.
To protect the privacy of drivers and passengers, the recordings will not be stored on personal mobile phones. They will be encrypted and stored on DiDi’s servers, to be deleted automatically after 72 hours.
The company is now opening a public consultation on whether individuals who have served their terms for criminal offenses that did not involve public security, or personal or property safety should be given the chance to become Didi drivers.
Photo: Didi Chuxing
