With the concept of green and shared transportation deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, hitchhiking has become a new choice for people's travel. However, some popular cross-city routes have bred the illegal operation of "full-time" hitchhikers. "Fake" tailwind, "real" to earn money, bring a variety of hidden dangers such as driver and passenger disputes, ride safety and so on.

Hitchhiker "changed taste"

"The high-speed fee is yours." Despite the remark that "the highway fee is evenly shared", citizen Koizumi paid the full amount of the highway fee at the urging of the hitchhiker.

Since his work and residence are in two cities, Koizumi's cross-city travel is frequent. For him, hitchhiking is an economical and convenient choice. "In the past, when I met the owners who actually took the road along the way, they would generally agree to share the highway fee equally or the owner would bear the highway fee, but now they are all full-time drivers."

Prior to this, Koizumi had launched two consecutive hitchhiker orders, and the owners had made the same request after receiving the order. It is understood that these so-called "full-time" hitchhikers go back and forth to the same cross-city route multiple times a day, which is a "fake" hitchhiker and a "real" profitable operation.

On the Internet, many consumers are also complaining about "fake" hitchhikers. In addition to not sharing the highway fee as agreed, some hitchhikers did not drive according to the agreed route, fighting and carrying more passengers on the way, and the original order of one person eventually became multi-passenger.

Hitchhiking is a shared travel method in which the ride-sharing service provider publishes travel information in advance, and people with the same travel route choose to take the minibus of the ride-sharing service provider, share part of the travel cost or provide free mutual assistance. In 2022, the Ministry of Transport clarified that hitchhiking is not for profit. However, under the reality of the rapid development of hitchhiking, some car owners choose to "exploit loopholes" and make hitchhikers "change their taste".

A hitchhiker told reporters that in the densely populated urban agglomeration of the Pearl River Delta, the demand for short-distance cross-city travel is very strong. Running a cross-city hitchhiker can pull up to 4 people, making one or two trips a day easily, plus letting passengers pay for the highway, the cost is lower.

Ma Liang, a professor at the School of Public Administration of Chinese Minmin University, said that when the ride is replaced by "full-time", it will make the sharing economy lose its due characteristics, and it is also very easy to induce driver disputes.

There are many security risks

In 2018, a series of hitchhiking safety incidents occurred in Zhengzhou and Wenzhou, and hitchhiking safety was controversial. The platform involved was taken offline for rectification, and the management specifications were refined. At present, there are still a number of Internet platforms on the market to carry out hitchhiker business, and some also take it as their main business.

Despite the rectification, the hitchhiker business still has a "shadow". The reporter's investigation found that on these platforms, some car owners wear the skin of "riding with the wind", but they are actually engaged in the business of professional online car-hailing, and there are many potential safety risks.

A number of hitchhiker owners told reporters that compared with online ride-hailing, hitchhikers have fewer restrictions on driving age, vehicle conditions, safety background screening, etc., and the "fake" tailwind, "real" operation allows car owners to circumvent the necessary qualification supervision of the platform, which means that passengers who take "fake" hitchhikers bear greater safety risks.

After checking the operating rules of several hitchhiker platforms, the reporter found that taking the vehicle situation of hitchhikers as an example, the platform generally only requires less than 7 seats and a service life of less than 15 years. For ride-hailing, it is much stricter, requiring vehicles to install vehicle satellite positioning devices and emergency alarm devices with driving record functions, vehicle technical performance in line with relevant operational safety standards, vehicle mileage not reaching 60,8 kilometers and service life not reaching <> years.

Gu Dasong, associate professor at Southeast University Law School and executive director of the Transportation Rule of Law and Development Research Center, said that the "professional" hitchhiker across the city is actually providing unqualified and unapproved shuttle passenger transport services, which is suspected of being illegal. Such hitchhiker drivers may not meet the licensing conditions in terms of driving skills and safety awareness, and there are potential safety hazards.

In the investigation, the reporter also learned that the profit of "professional" hitchhikers once gave birth to illegal hitchhikers and engaged in "gangs" to carry passengers: one person is responsible for verifying the order through the platform, arriving at the designated place after picking up the passenger, transferring the mobile phone and passengers to the real driver, and realizing the order "substitution and replacement of cars".

"Tailwind" development requires industry co-governance

The reporter learned that many hitchhiker platforms have formulated requirements such as controlling prices, fixing common routes, and limiting the number of orders based on the principles of "true tailwind" and "low pricing", so as to lay an institutional guarantee for true hitchhiking.

These systems have cleaned up the market to some extent, but some car owners illegally take orders on multiple platforms at the same time, making it difficult to maximize the effectiveness of this restriction. The relevant person in charge of the hitchhiker platform said that at present, the platform is naturally in a state of isolation, and the essence of some car owners' violations and multiple spells is an industry coordination problem, which requires the full cooperation of the entire hitchhiker industry market entities and management departments to establish an industry co-governance system.

Gu Dasong said that the major hitchhiker platforms have developed a number of mechanisms to ensure the safety and standardization of hitchhiking travel, but there are no clear regulations on hitchhiking supervision at the national level, and the relevant documents of the State Office only require local governments to issue guidance policies for car sharing. Xinhua News Agency