Didi passenger's murder raises ride-hailing safety concerns

UPDATE: Chinese company suspends Hitch service nationwide

Didi Chuxing headquarters in Beijing, China. Passenger safety has come to the fore. Reuters

UPDATE:

China's largest ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing is suspending its Hitch services nationwide, the company said in a statement on Sunday, a day after police said a ride-sharing passenger in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou was raped and killed by a driver, Reuters reported.

Didi Chuxing, the biggest ride-sharing company globally by number of trips, said it was sorry that the carpooling service would be suspended from August 27 due to "disappointing mistakes", while the company reevaluated the product's business model.

The Hitch carpooling service has served over a billion trips in the past three years, the company said.

A ride-sharing passenger in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou was raped and killed by a driver, local police said on Saturday, the latest violent crime to fuel safety concerns about the service.

Didi was "immensely saddened by the tragedy", it said in a statement.

“We are deeply sorry. We fell short of your expectations. We can’t and we won’t shirk from our responsibilities,” it said.

Following the incident, Zhejiang province, where Wenzhou is located, ordered Didi to suspend its carpooling service there while the company addressed safety issues, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Didi has been stepping up safety measures including for its carpooling service, Didi Hitch, after the murder of a flight attendant in May sparked wider community outrage.

The steps include limiting Didi Hitch drivers to picking up passengers of the same sex during early morning and late evening hours.

Police in Yueqing city, which is part of Wenzhou, said on their official blog that the 20-year-old woman, surnamed Zhao, got into a Didi carpool vehicle at 1pm on Friday, and sent a message to a friend at around 2pm seeking help before losing contact.

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Police said they found the suspect, a 27-year-old driver called Zhong, at about 4am on Saturday. They said Zhong confessed to raping and killing the passenger, and that the victim’s body had been recovered and an investigation was continuing.

Didi said the driver had passed background checks and had logged in with his authentic ID and had been confirmed by facial recognition on the day. However, the driver had altered the car’s licence plate before the trip, the company said.

A day earlier, a passenger had complained to Didi that the same driver had repeatedly requested that she sit in the front seat, drove to a remote area, and followed her “for a distance” after she got out of the car, Didi said. It said the customer service representative who took the complaint had not followed up with an investigation within two hours, as the firm promises.

Didi - which has been valued at $50 billion and counts SoftBank Group as a major investor - is aggressively expanding overseas, targeting new markets in Mexico, Brazil and Australia, going head-to-head with Uber. In 2016, Didi acquired Uber's China business.

"The fact that Didi has a driver safety and security issue is a real problem for Didi ... and an opportunity for new service providers who can better serve the mobility demand," said Bill Russo, chief executive of Automobility Limited, a consultancy in Shanghai.