Han Ximin

ximhan@126.com

DIDI customer service received more than 80,000 calls regarding safety-related incidents during rides in Q1 and over 35 percent turned out to be false complaints, according to Safety Transparency Report released by Didi Chuxing on Tuesday.

Globally, it is the first time a ride-hailing platform has published its detailed safety data.

Among the cases reported by valid calls, 121 involved violations of the law, among which 10 were criminal cases such as physical assaults between passengers and drivers, and 111 were public security cases. Of the 111 cases, 92 were caused by passengers’ physical attacks on drivers and 46 percent were conflicts between drunk passengers and drivers, such as incidents related to passengers demanding unsafe driving, damaging to the car, raised fares and routing disputes, and attempts to take control of the steering wheel or shift gears. Thirty percent were due to smoking, soiling the vehicle, demanding speeding, or exceeding the passenger number limit.

All of the cases were solved with Didi’s cooperation with the police by the company’s 24/7 law enforcement coordination mechanism, the report said.

Didi also punished drivers for breaching rules by activities such as prohibiting them from providing future services to passengers, while passengers were advised to learn more about driving and traffic safety.

Didi said in February it will add about 2,500 employers to tackle safety issues and had also sacked about 2,000 staff members following the murders of two passengers by Didi Hitch drivers in Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province and Zhengzhou City in Henan Province.

Didi works with over 31 million drivers across China to serve about 550 million registered riders. In 2018, Didi delivered over 10 billion trips on its multi-modal transportation platform.

Didi calls for the riders to make full use of its in-app and offline safety features, check license plates and driver profiles, choose to sit in the backseats, wear seatbelts and avoid offline deals.