Didi suspends Hitch service after passenger murder

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Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hailing app, announced it has suspended its Hitch service and will take more measures to protect users’ privacy after a driver murdered a passenger just over a week ago.

Didi Hitch has been taken down since May 12 “for a safety overhaul,” and safety enhancements will be carried out in the coming days for Hitch and Didi’s other mobility services, according to a statement the company sent to CGTN on Wednesday.

On May 6, a 21-year-old flight attendant was killed by a Didi Hitch driver after hailing a car from the airport in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.

The tragedy has reverberated around Chinese social media, leading to heated discussion over the safety of using the ride-hailing service.

Many Didi users posted screenshots from the app, criticizing it for offering opportunities for sexual harassment. For instance, unbeknownst to passengers, Didi Hitch drivers can rate them based on their appearance with many comments being sexual in nature.

Afterwards, many female Didi users changed their user names and profile pictures to images of middle-aged men to protect themselves.

Obviously, Didi has been following these online criticisms. The Wednesday statement said that the personalized tags and ratings features of the Hitch service will be taken down.

Meanwhile, personal information and profile pictures of passengers and car owners will be visible only to themselves and all publicly-displayed profile pictures will be replaced with a system-generated default image, the statement said.

Moreover, the Hitch service will be suspended between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., the statement said.

All of these new safety measures will be implemented after the Hitch service resumes, the company said, without revealing a date.

Didi also responded to doubts about drivers’ identity checks, claiming to ensure a driver-vehicle match by adopting facial recognition tests and strengthening the report program for mismatch cases, the statement said, noting all these measures will be fully implemented by the end of May.