Ride-hailing services, or zhuanche, are popular with passengers because of their lower fares and round-the-clock availability, but a series of recent crimes and misdemeanors attributed to drivers has cast a cloud over the non-traditional cabs.
Last Tuesday, a 24-year-old woman in the Guangdong Province city of Shenzhen was killed by a zhuanche driver she had hired via Didi, China's largest ride-hailing application. It turned out the driver was using a fake license.
In early March, a driver was arrested after he attempted to rape a passenger he picked up in Hangzhou's Xiaoshan District. Another female passenger, in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province, wasn't so lucky. She was raped and robbed by a driver in late March.
Hangzhou's taxi-hailing services are dominated by five providers: Uber, Didi, Yidao, Caocao and Shenzhou. The city has more than 300,000 registered drivers on these app platforms. They have largely operated in a gray area not bound by the rules and regulations on traditional taxi companies.
Criminal activities associated with taxi-hailing services are not confined to China. In the US, an Uber driver shot and killed six people in February. A series of fatal collisions involving hailed cabs and least reported three rape cases in the last two months have also made headlines in the US.
Cases like these make some people wary about taxi-hailing services. These services originated under the "sharing concept," where private drivers could offer rides to passengers via mobile communication apps. To register as a zhuanche driver in China, a person need only upload a driver's license and identity card online. Companies operating hailing services claim the information is vetted.
In some cases, companies operate zhuanche services using their own fleets of cars. Last November, a Hangzhou zhuanche company reported to police that one of its cars was stolen by a newly hired driver. The police later reported that the driver was a man on the run wanted for murder.
On a more mundane level, passengers sometimes complain that drivers play with their cellphones while driving. In some instances, the car that shows up at the curb is different from the one that appeared on the app.
In some cases, drivers who keep late hours to make more money succumb to fatigue at the wheel. Last December, a local driver forgot to engage the emergency brake when he stopped on a slope at night. The car slipped into a river, but nobody was injured.
To try to bring order and safety to a fledgling industry, the Hangzhou government is currently drafting regulations on ride-hailing apps. Ahead of the new rules, local authorities have begun to verify drivers' personal information and have ordered taxi-hailing companies to hand over registered data.
Any driver with a previous conviction, record of drug-taking or evidence of mental illness will be deactivated.
Last year, the local government impounded 300 illegal zhuanche. Among them, nine drivers with criminal records, including robbery and burglary, were found.
In addition, full-time zhuanche drivers are now required to have physical examinations once a year. Didi said it will also cooperate with traffic departments to remove applicants who have had major traffic incidents within the last three years.
Uber said it has already verified the personal information of all its registered drivers and logged each car's use, routes, dates and times.
This month, Uber began applying face-recognition technology to the process to match drivers with the person they claim to be on registered data.
In addition, Hangzhou authorities have begun weeding out zhuanche with out-of-town license plates.
"Like mainstream cabbies, they are not allowed to transport passengers in other cities," said the Hangzhou Road and Transportation Management Bureau. "In addition, most out-of-town cars are not familiar with local traffic conditions, which adds to the existing congestion on the roads."
As it stands now, the taxi-hailing companies are under orders to deactivate accounts with fake personal information and out-of-town license plates. Companies cannot add new accounts until all registration data submitted by an April 30 deadline have been verified by authorities.
