Didi halts its carpool business for driver checks after passenger murder

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China’s biggest ride-sharing company, Didi Chuxing, said on Friday it would halt for a week one of its domestic services, “ride-hitching,” following the death of a female passenger that sparked questions about safety.

The killing of a 21-year-old flight attendant in the central province of Henan last week has sparked heated debate on China’s active social media, fast becoming the most talked about topic on microblog platform Weibo with many expressing safety concerns.

The company apologized and said it would suspend its Hitch service – a pooling service for passengers and drivers going to the same destination – from Saturday nationwide, and would start checks on drivers.

“Didi will suspend the Hitch service for a week nationwide for self-inspection and rectification,” it said in a statement.

Other services were not affected at Didi, the world’s largest ride-hailing firm by number of rides and a dominant player in China, where it has 450 million users.

Police in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, are still hunting for the suspected killer of the victim, who had been traveling to the city from the airport hotel.

Didi said the male suspect had used a driver account that belonged to his father, who had passed the company’s verification process, criminal background screening and other security measures.

“The suspect borrowed his parent’s account to take orders, in violation of terms of our services,” the company said.

Didi said its facial recognition system, which matches the driver’s face with registration information, was not triggered before the suspect took the customer’s order.

The company said it would review drivers across all its services “to exclude any cases involving mismatch of drivers and vehicles.”

Didi, well-known for its bid of buying Uber’s China business, finished its latest funding round in last December with its valuation of 56 billion US dollars.

It also tends to expand its global business through buying an Uber rival in Brazil and starting its own service in Mexico in April this year.

It’s said that Didi is planning to go public by the end of the year, potentially putting it ahead of Uber, which plans to have its IPO next year.

But whether this scandal will have further impact on this car-hailing giant’s world expansion map, let’s wait and see.

Source(s): Reuters