While Uber is still recovering from the fatal crash involving one of his driverless cars, the Chinese rival of the carpool company is dealing with his own tragic death. Didi Chuxing announced today that he would modernize his application after a passenger was raped and killed by his driver.
The passenger, 21-year-old flight attendant Li Mingzhu, was found dead Saturday after taking a car from Didi in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, according to state media. Police are still looking for Didi's driver, surnamed Liu, who abandoned his vehicle and jumped into a river after allegedly killing Li.
Didi has faced a growing protest of passengers in recent days, especially of women who complain that the application allows drivers to leave comments on their profiles regarding your appearances In China, Didi offers a range of services, including Didi Hitch, a carpooling service, which Li was using at the time of his death. Passengers and drivers often upload photos to their user profiles, and the application allows drivers to attach notes to the image of a cyclist. According to The New York Times some passengers say they think the property crossed a line.
Su Shiya, 21, a student in southern China, examined her Didi profile and discovered that drivers had labeled her as an "intellectual beauty" and a "girlfriend".
"These comments are open to all Didi drivers," he said. "Everyone knows how I look." He said he found the comments chilling, and since then he has replaced his image with that of an animated dog.
Didi said he suspended his co-location service on May 12, promulgating several new security measures. characteristics. The company says it eliminated "all custom tags and qualification features" that were part of the Hitch service, as well as user photos. "Personal information and profile images of passengers and car owners will be visible only to the individual," says the company. "All profile pictures publicly displayed will be replaced by a default image generated by the system."
Didi is doing "mandatory" face recognition for drivers at Hitch to "minimize the risk of unapproved use of the account." A "zero tolerance". "It will be presented for other Didi shooting services to ensure driver loyalty, China is known for its controllers falsifying accounts and travel Sometimes several drivers share an account or unregistered drivers borrow their friends' phones and divide the earnings
After it resumes, Hitch will also be suspended every night between 10PM and 6AM, as Didi assesses the effectiveness of his security updates. more prominently an emergency help button on the application's home screen
"We are committed to fully assume our due legal responsibilities related to traffic accidents, public safety, criminal cases and disputes on our platform" , says the company.
Li's death came at a particularly sensitive time for Didi, which is the largest travel service in the world with more than 450 million users. The company has just launched in Mexico, its first foray into a North American market. There, he will resume his rivalry with Uber for the first time since acquiring Uber's Chinese business in 2016.
Didi also recently received a license to try driverless cars in California. The decision comes a year after the company opened a research laboratory based in Silicon Valley to develop autonomous driving technology.