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Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

theatlantic.com

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Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#11

Post by gbraad »

dmoy wrote: post #10
azurezyq wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data supporting data for your claim? I'm a Chinese and this kind of murders are really rare. The last one I heard in my hometown (a small costal city) is over 10 years ago. And with taxi-hailing apps' commence, this is becoming really rare since the driver can easily pin-pointed (by cross-referencing ubiquitous street cams). Actually in this case the murderer got arrested soon afterwards. While I agree Ch…

I don't think the point was that cab murders were high, just that both were low, so the whole freak out is probably not rational. The "heard of often" just means it gets plastered on the news / social media when it does happen.

> not rational

If it could have been prevented, it is the right reaction.

Besides, this is how China works most of the time. Pressure (boycot) on companies leads to results... or put them out of (nearly) business.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#12

Post by seanmcdirmid »

azurezyq wrote: post #8
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, and before that taxi driver murderers were also heard of often in China (though I’m not sure if they were more likely to be murderers than average). Also, Chinese police are overworked (China is extremely under policed ironically enough) and so tend to focus on seemingly easy but impractical solutions to fighting crime.

Do you have data supporting data for your claim? I'm a Chinese and this kind of murders are really rare. The last one I heard in my hometown (a small costal city) is over 10 years ago. And with taxi-hailing apps' commence, this is becoming really rare since the driver can easily pin-pointed (by cross-referencing ubiquitous street cams). Actually in this case the murderer got arrested soon afterwards. While I agree Ch…

In Beijing it wasn’t uncommon to hear of a PKU student every few years being murdered by a taxi driver (especially black taxis), once they went full in on satellite campuses causing lots of transit headaches. And like I said originally, I don’t know if it was higher than average or just well publicized when it happens.

Ride sharing and taxi hailing apps have definitely made taking a taxi mug safer. Conserving how didi has replace black cabs, that is definitely a good thing. I’m not sure why the government wants didi to shutdown its ride sharing business rather than rely on it as a sure fire way of at least solving murders after the fact. Even full background checks won’t solve murders 100%, and knowing you’ll get caught is a great deterrent.

Property crimes are still a huge problem in China, there is a reason all 2nd tier apartments are still barred like crazy. Chinese police don’t really care, they are not using the CCTVs to actually fight property crime, rather for other things.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#13

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gbraad wrote: post #11
dmoy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the point was that cab murders were high, just that both were low, so the whole freak out is probably not rational. The "heard of often" just means it gets plastered on the news / social media when it does happen.

> not rational If it could have been prevented, it is the right reaction. Besides, this is how China works most of the time. Pressure (boycot) on companies leads to results... or put them out of (nearly) business.

I believe that was my original point: Chinese officials will rely on didi to police it’s drivers, since having the police instead do that isn’t practical. But it winds up being worse than that, since if didi wasn’t around we would all be taking anonymous black cabs again.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#14

Post by 0x8BADF00D »

village-idiot wrote: post #7
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, and before that taxi driver murderers were also heard of often in China (though I’m not sure if they were more likely to be murderers than average). Also, Chinese police are overworked (China is extremely under policed ironically enough) and so tend to focus on seemingly easy but impractical solutions to fighting crime.

There’s often political pressures on police departments to fix unpopular statistics, and not the actual issue. Most famously this leads Japanese departments to label difficult murder cases as suicides.

Excellent point. This is a prime example of how government intervention mucks things up by setting up relatively benign goals, but in practice leads to an outcome that is unchanged, or perhaps even worse. What if all Japanese citizens were allowed to carry guns out in the open? An armed society is a polite society.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#15

Post by jchb »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #14
village-idiot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s often political pressures on police departments to fix unpopular statistics, and not the actual issue. Most famously this leads Japanese departments to label difficult murder cases as suicides.

Excellent point. This is a prime example of how government intervention mucks things up by setting up relatively benign goals, but in practice leads to an outcome that is unchanged, or perhaps even worse. What if all Japanese citizens were allowed to carry guns out in the open? An armed society is a polite society.

> An armed society is a polite society.

Perhaps suggesting that the Japanese need more guns to be polite wasn't the best example. Japan is already one of the most (the most?) polite society in the world - at least talking about how strangers interact.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#17

Post by illuminati1911 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4
graeme wrote: post #3

Has anyone worked out what the base rate expectation of murder would be? I think I read in the FT that Didi has booked a few billion rides in that period. How many people (and women) would normally be murdered in cabs? The stories cited are obviously horrific and it sounds like Didi could have prevented them with a better system. But, I'd nonetheless be interested to know how safe this is to the alternative, and also…

This, and before that taxi driver murderers were also heard of often in China (though I’m not sure if they were more likely to be murderers than average). Also, Chinese police are overworked (China is extremely under policed ironically enough) and so tend to focus on seemingly easy but impractical solutions to fighting crime.

China has one of the lowest intentional homicide rates in the world.

I’m actually writing this from Didi at the moment. It’s quite irrational to overhype these didi-murders since China is a country of about 1.4 billion people and statistically these incidents are pretty much meaningless. I guess it’s same kind of irrationality like in the west, when people try to come up with problems about Uber that have always existed in other contextes.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#18

Post by illuminati1911 »

person_of_color wrote: post #16

Western media loves reporting on instances of rape, murder in India, China even though statistics reveal they are lower per capita than in the West. Hegemony in action.

This. I moved to to Shanghai from North Europe and while there are dangers here in the traffic, food safety etc. violence is not one of them.

The violent crime here and in China in general from western point of view is almost non-exisistent.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#19

Post by toomanybeersies »

graeme wrote: post #3

Has anyone worked out what the base rate expectation of murder would be? I think I read in the FT that Didi has booked a few billion rides in that period. How many people (and women) would normally be murdered in cabs? The stories cited are obviously horrific and it sounds like Didi could have prevented them with a better system. But, I'd nonetheless be interested to know how safe this is to the alternative, and also…

I've personally had enough problems with taxi drivers (and I live in a developed country) that I will only take a taxi as a last resort. They overcharge, they demand cash because apparently their EFTPOS machine is broken, they drive you on the scenic route to increase the fare, or they'll try to set a fixed price when you know it's cheaper to run the meter, half the time the driver doesn't even know how to get there and I have to navigate them.

Just last week I got woken up at 3 AM by a distraught housemate being dropped home by the police because a cabbie sexually assaulted her. It's fucking disgusting what cabbies manage to get away with and then claim "Uber is bad because it's unregulated". Uber's self regulation has proven to be vastly superior to the taxi industry.

Meanwhile with Uber, my experience has been 90% positive. It's incredibly rare to have a driver try to rip me off and it's a lot safer in general. I'm absolutely sure that the cabbie who assaulted my friend has done it before to other people, and will do it again to some other poor drunk girl. I live in a Australia, this shouldn't be an issue we're facing, but it is.

I don't know what Didi is like compared to Uber, but I'm absolutely sure that it's better than cabs, especially in developing countries.

Re: Rideshare boycott sparked by murders in China

#20

Post by philliphaydon »

person_of_color wrote: post #16

Western media loves reporting on instances of rape, murder in India, China even though statistics reveal they are lower per capita than in the West. Hegemony in action.

Except in India it’s quite high and most go unreported.
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