Didi mulls return of carpooling service a year after two passenger deaths

Didi Chuxing, operator of China’s largest ride-hailing platform, is considering to resume its controversial Hitch carpooling service, nearly a year after two passenger deaths plunged the startup into a crisis over user safety.

Photo credit: Didi Chuxing

The potential return of Hitch was discussed by Didi president Jean Liu Qing at a press briefing on Tuesday in Beijing, where she said the company planned to engage the public in talks on how to increase safety in the service.

“The Hitch service is very environmentally friendly and is a product that can truly address core demand [for people’s daily transport needs],” Liu said.

She acknowledged, however, the public’s concerns about Hitch and assured that the team behind the service “has been working on how to launch a product that is relatively safer and more trustworthy.”

The Didi president did not provide a timetable on the resumption of Hitch, but said the public dialogs on safety improvements will soon be underway.

This effort to revive Hitch comes about six months after Beijing-based Didi started overhauling its operations to enhance safety and efficiency, as the company sought to regain public confidence rocked by two passenger deaths last year.

Launched in 2015, Hitch enables private car owners registered on the Didi platform to pick up passengers for a fee if they are heading in the same direction. Charges are lower than regular taxi fare or an on-demand ride.

In August last year, a Hitch driver was arrested by police and confessed to raping and killing a 20-year-old female passenger in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. That tragedy came about three months after a 21-year-old flight attendant was raped and killed by her Didi driver in the country’s central Henan province.

Didi halted its Hitch service in August after the second passenger death and introduced a flurry of safety measures – including compulsory in-trip audio recording and a panic button linked directly to local police stations – amid the public’s outrage and a clampdown by regulators.

Public scrutiny of Hitch has been focused on Didi’s promotion of the service as a way to meet people. Former Hitch service head Huang Jieli had been publicly criticized for an online media interview in 2015, in which she described Hitch as a “very sexy scenario” for people to meet.

Didi has removed about 306,000 drivers from its platform since August, which is about one in every 100 registered drivers with the company as of 2018, according to statistics shared by Liu during the press briefing. The company plans to invest about 2 billion yuan (US$292 million) and expand its safety team to more than 2,500 this year.

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