(Photo/CCTV)

Food delivery men in Pudong New Area, in east China’s Shanghai, were required by the traffic police department of the area to start wearing reflective safety vests with numbers printed on them, the move is widely applauded by Chinese netizens.

The new requirement was introduced on Mar. 29 and has so far witnessed 18,000 food delivery drivers register into the food delivery management system pertaining to the traffic police department of the area, covering almost all the food delivery men in the jurisdiction of the traffic police department of the Pudong New Area.

The new move together with such measures as accumulating points on traffic violations implemented earlier in the area is expected to not only show clearly the identity of the food delivery men, but also help the government and enterprises supervise them.

Each food delivery driver has a number printed on his/her vest, so that if a driver has violated traffic regulations, the number would then be recorded, and, as the number has been connected with each driver’s identity, those that have made this violation will be punished even if they escaped, explained Zhu Rongxue, vice director of the vehicle publicity brigade of the traffic police department of Pudong New Area.

The traffic police department of the area has made an agreement with food delivery companies regarding the establishment of certain criteria for forbidding certain people from being food delivery drivers and prohibiting some people from providing food delivery services via riding any more.

According to the agreement, a food delivery driver who has recorded traffic violations of an accumulative 12 points within a quarter would be required to study traffic rules online, while 24 points would mean that the driver needs to take part in volunteer services on the streets, and 36 points would make the driver be banished from the food delivery team.

Chinese netizens expressed strong support for the new measure, commenting that safety matters the most, and that they hope the requirement would be promoted across the country.

“This is both beneficial to the drivers and pedestrians,” “most customers are actually not that picky, these companies should lower their requirement on the punctuality and give the drivers more time to wait at the traffic lights,” “such exclusive vests will be a good reminder regarding traffic safety for food delivery drivers”, said some netizens.