Almost a year after suspending the service, Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing on Thursday proposed a relaunch of its Hitch carpooling service with added safety features.

The service had come under fire in 2018 following the murder of a female passenger by her Didi driver.

The case had badly dented Didi's image at a time when it was trying to expand overseas to compete with foreign rivals such as Uber and drove the company to pledge that it would prioritize safety over growth going forward.

"If we're relaunching Hitch carpooling service in the future, we will not set scale and profit as our main goals," Didi's CEO Cheng Wei said on Thursday.

Didi has no definite timetable for the relaunch, but it is putting forward a proposal for public consultation, the company said in a statement.

The service will minimize its display of personal information and offer an in-app pop-up that would allow drivers and passengers double-check the identity of the people they share a car with, Didi said.

Didi also plans to form a partnership with Chinese insurers to provide up to 1.2 million yuan (174,502 U.S. dollars) in accident insurance and roll out a separate program for female passengers and drivers, comprising features such as algorithms that can detect things such as abnormal route changes.

Hitch allowed users to hail a car through their smartphone and share a ride with someone else headed in the same direction.

(With input from Reuters)