Shenzhen suspended on Tuesday over 8,000 drivers of Didi Chuxing after one of its drivers held up and killed a female passenger last week.
Didi Chuxing is a taxi-hailing app similar to Grab and Uber. The driver who killed the woman rider used a fake license plate. Shenzhen police were able to find the suspect because the victim, a 24-year-old school teacher, took a photo of the cab’s license plate using her mobile phone before she entered the taxi, reported The South China Morning Post.
The 24-year-old driver had confessed to killing the female passenger and throwing her corpse in a remote part of the city. The suspect was apprehended the next day in a rented apartment, according to the Nanshan district police.
Thepaper.cn said that the 8,000 Didi Chuxing drivers were suspended for failure to uphold the firm’s standard of services. They remain suspended until a review of their performance is finished.
While Shenzhen suspended the drivers, Beijing is set to implement this May a national law that regulates Chinas car-hailing services which is fast growing. The government passed the new regulation after media reported some high-profile controversies regarding the service after riders complained of harassment or being threatened by the cab drivers.
When the government inspected cabs in March, it found 1,425 drivers of five major vehicle-hailing apps in Shenzhen, including Uber and Didi Chuxing, to have drug abuse histories, while another 1,661 have major criminal records.
In April, a taxi driver in Haiku, Hainan Province, was fired because he touched himself sexually while driving four women passengers.