Chinese ride-hailer Didi claimed that it had removed 306,000 unqualified drivers and vehicles from its ride-hailing platform, one of the many measures the company had taken to improve safety after two female passengers were raped and murdered by their Didi drivers in two separate incidents between May and August last year.
However, issues still seem to remain. [pullquote]The Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission disclosed on its official WeChat account that it found on Wednesday “153,400 unlawful vehicles”, out of which 128,000 were from Didi.[/pullquote] It added that all of those vehicles registered with Didi were cars once registered on other ride-hailing platforms but got phased out as they failed to meet regulations.
The commission’s law enforcement team visited Didi’s Shanghai branch twice and sampled 10 ride-hailing orders on a random basis in the morning and another 10 in the afternoon, finding all of them were fulfilled by vehicles that did not meet local regulations, which have been in place since 2016. They include requirements like vehicle registration in Shanghai and in-car emergency police call buttons.
According to the Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission Didi does not yet even have an operating license in the city, adding that it fined the company RMB 200,000 (around USD 29,000) for providing car-hailing services to unqualified vehicles.
The website of the commission shows that there are currently 29 ride-hailing platforms with an operating permit, including Meituan’s ride-hailing app and Shenma.
This is the seventh time that Didi got fined by the regulators in Shanghai this month alone, according to a 36Kr report.
On its Weibo account Didi on June 14 confirmed an incident in which one of its drivers went out of control as he was trying to evade Shanghai regulators, hurting several people. According to a Chinese media report, this driver was operating a vehicle which did not meet the regulator’s criteria.
Didi promised to invest RMB 2 billion (USD 290.6 million) on safety-related measures in 2019 and has been under heavy public scrutiny since the rape-and-murder cases.
Didi has not responded to KrAsia‘s request for a comment.
36Kr is KrAsia’s parent company
