Didi restarts hitch service but adds more conditions

Uploads of information required for safety; some customers complain

Didi Chuxing resumed its “hitch” service over the weekend, with new functions added to improve safety, but customers have complained that fewer services are provided.

The car-hailing company’s hitch service has been suspended since May 12, after the murder of a 21-year-old flight attendant. She was killed by a Didi driver on May 6 in Henan province. The pickup was arranged via mobile app, connecting passengers to private cars heading in the same direction.

The company redesigned its app to ensure safety, while suspending the hitch service between 10 pm and 6 am. The app’s socialization features, which allowed drivers and passengers to post comments and tags about each other, have also been shut down to avoid vulgar descriptions of female passengers, which occurred in the past.

Drivers cannot see passengers’ personal information or profile pictures before picking them up, and vice versa. Drivers must also be confirmed via facial recognition before taking an order to minimize the risk of unauthorized account use.

Passengers and drivers must upload more information — identification cards, facial recognition, safety advisories and a quiz — before

A frequent user surnamed Shen in Beijing tested the new app on Sunday for a ride from Wangjing to Chaoyang Joy City, a shopping mall. She waited for nearly half an hour, but no driver accepted her invitation for a pickup. Also, only nine drivers were available to provide service at the time she needed it.

“It usually had 20 to 30 drivers available for the route,” she said, adding that she changed her plan to take a normal Didi service instead, but it was more expensive than the hitch service.

A passenger surnamed Cao described her experience using the hitch service on Saturday as “funny and frustrating”, Beijing Daily reported. A truck picked her up after half an hour of waiting, and the driver took her and a box of using the hitch service. cherries. She missed the old days when premier private cars usually accepted orders.

A former hitch service driver who asked not to be named said he did not upgrade his profile and decided to quit the service after the murder. He sometimes took passengers between home and work to subsidize his gasoline costs.

“The new service seems to be more complicated. It also seems to have much more legal liability, and my wife asked me to stop it,” he said.

Media reports said that more passengers are quitting the cheaper hitch service to take premier services or taxis.

In an earlier interview on China Central Television, Cai Tuanjie, deputy head of the Ministry of Transport’s transport services department, urged companies to inspect drivers and vehicles to clear out illegal ones.

WANG BINGZHEN / FOR CHINA DAILY Yang Yuanmei, 35, of the Miao ethnic group, is reunited with her mother in her hometown in Rongjiang county, Guizhou province, on Sunday. She was abducted and sold to a man to be his wife 20 years ago and was later sold to a second man, who...