Shanghai traffic police officers are tightening up spot checks on private car drivers using mobile apps such as Didi and Uber to find passengers, because these are illegal in China. And the police officers have been kept busy catching the offenders.
At around 7 p.m. yesterday, a private car was stopped by traffic police at the Hongqiao airport. The driver admitted that he was accepting an illegal rider from an online app.
"Do you know the passenger? No, I don't. Then how could the passenger be in your car," said a man.
"The passenger booked the car through Uber. The ride just started. The starting fare is 15 yuan. The vehicle license shows it's only for private use," said a policeman.
Police then confiscated the car and fined the driver for 10,000 yuan. His driving license was also suspended for three to six months. Police say they have dealt with more than 180 such cases since November last year.
At the start of this year, Didi was fined 100 thousand yuan for its poor control of private cars on its platform. Police say they will issue punishments for drivers as well.
"If we can confirm the driver has provided an illegal ride, we will submit his information to the city's personal credit record system. And we will inform his company about his illegal activity," said Chen Zhaohui, traffic police in Shanghai.
Transport authorities say they are considering training more private drivers in order to better regulate them and grant them licenses to accept passengers.
Also, they have launched a new platform to supervise the two biggest local taxi booking apps, Didi and Kuaidi. The platform will allow the city's transportation authority to cross-check driver information from the city's four major taxi companies with the databases of the two booking companies. The idea is meant to prevent cloned cabs from signing up for the service.
