Murder provokes Didi to revamp services

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- China's ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing (hereinafter Didi) will disable all of rating and tagging functions from its hitching service, the company announced on May 16. To win back users' trust after the killing of a female passenger, Didi will also intensify the inspection of driver's qualification based on the platform and improve its emergency help function. The revamp will be completed before May 31.

The 21-year-old flight attendant was purportedly raped and killed by her driver, which has triggered a drastic query about the safety of ride-hailing service. Meanwhile, the exposure that Didi' drivers tag female passenger by their appearance disgraces the company as well.

Didi took a range of measures to ease the public's anger and save the company's image loss. From May 12, Didi suspended its hitching service nationwide to conduct one-week internal inspection and rectification. On May 16, the company said it will temporarily reject the orders between 10 pm to 6 am.

Besides, the facial recognition must be mandatory for all drivers in case of imposture of drivers' accounts. Reportedly, the male suspect, who purportedly killed the young flight attendant, used the account belonging to his father, while without being detected. After the tragedy happened, Didi also admitted its facial recognition function was imperfect.

In addition, Didi has said the profile pictures of passengers on the carpooling platform will be replaced by the system's default images, which terminates the rating and tagging of passengers. Many users, especially women, have removed their selfies on the platform for the sake of self-protection.