EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
Didi Chuxing implements new safety features after driver murders woman
Uber Technologies Inc. is not the only ride-hailing company with problems. Didi Chuxing Technology Co., the world’s largest startup by valuation, Wednesday was forced to make changes to one of its apps after a customer was murdered.
The murder of a 21-year-old woman by a Didi driver in the central province of Henan was tied back to a carpooling service offered by Didi called Hitch that allowed users to rate other users before agreeing to share rides.
That app, among other things, allowed users to rate other users on features such as appearance. Bloomberg noted Wednesday that the service was rife with comments that marked female passengers as “goddesses” and “beauties.” The woman was apparently targeted specifically by the murderer because of comments about her beauty left by other users on the Hitch app.
In response to the murder, Didi temporarily suspended the app, before announcing a range of changes Wednesday to make the service more secure for both drivers and passengers.
Along with the obvious change of removing the ability for drivers to rate the appearance of passengers, Didi said all personal information and profile pictures of passengers and car-owners will now be visible only to the individual themselves. All publicly displayed profile pictures are being replaced with a system-generated default image.
A new compulsory facial recognition system will be implemented for every Hitch driver as well. The murderer, in this case, is alleged to have used his father’s Hitch account to arrange to meet the woman he went on to kill.
As an additional safety measure, Hitch services have been suspended between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. until further notice.
Those changes apply only to Didi’s Hitch carpooling service, but the company is going further with its general ride-hailing app as well, adding that it’s introducing a zero-tolerance policy to ensure driver-vehicle match with all drivers for DiDi Express, DiDi Premier and DiDi Luxe now required to pass a facial recognition test every day they’re driving for the company.
Photo: Didi Chuxing
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