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Business News/ Companies / Uber Wants to Be Your Kids’ Chauffeur
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Uber Wants to Be Your Kids’ Chauffeur

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The app is granting 13- to 17-year-olds parent-supervised accounts for rides and food delivery

FILE - An Uber sign is displayed at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. Joseph Sullivan, the former chief security officer for Uber has been sentenced to probation for trying to cover up a 2016 data breach in which hackers accessed tens of millions of customer records from the ride-hailing service, Thursday, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) (AP)Premium
FILE - An Uber sign is displayed at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. Joseph Sullivan, the former chief security officer for Uber has been sentenced to probation for trying to cover up a 2016 data breach in which hackers accessed tens of millions of customer records from the ride-hailing service, Thursday, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) (AP)

Uber is offering a solution for parents who need help driving kids around: Let their drivers do it.

Starting Monday, parents and caregivers in 28 metro areas in the U.S. and Canada can invite teens under 18 to create individual Uber accounts linked to a central family profile.

The new accounts let teens request rides on Uber and order food deliveries on Uber Eats. Previously, people had to be 18 to sign up for an Uber account and ride unaccompanied. Many parents already ignored the rule, the company said.

Sachin Kansal, vice president of product management at Uber, noted that teens are already riding. Until now, he said, the app didn’t provide guardians proper tools for supervising their children or enhanced safety features for younger riders. “And it’s a problem for drivers because they don’t know there’s a teen getting into the car," he added.

New protections

The new accounts notify parents when teens request rides and send phone notifications when they reach their destination. Trips will be charged to the default payment method in the parent or guardian’s family profile.

Other guardrails will limit teens to taking trips within their home metro areas, and the young passengers will be given a PIN that drivers must match. Uber said teens can bring up to three friends with them, as long as they’re 13 or older and sitting in the back seat. They can only request UberX or Uber Green rides—and they’ll be charged standard rates including surge prices, the company said. There’s no spending limit, but they can’t request the premium Uber Comfort, Uber Reserve or UberXL.

Driver criteria

Drivers can opt in if they’re amenable to taking requests for teen rides. Uber said it would only approve highly rated drivers who have performed hundreds of rides. New drivers won’t be eligible. Kansal declined to share additional driver requirements.

Drivers will be able to rate teen accounts, but those ratings won’t affect the parent or family profile, he said.

Parental supervision

Parents and caregivers can track teens’ trips in real time, and can call the driver if needed. Uber will also use software to monitor teen trips for potential anomalies, such as prolonged stops ahead of the destination. Drivers can’t change the destination of the trip; only teens can.

One more extreme safeguard: In the app, the teen can opt into automatic audio recordings of every ride. The files are stored encrypted on the child’s device. Uber said it would be able to obtain the recording only if the user opens an incident report. Otherwise, it can’t be accessed by anyone.

When teens turn 18, their accounts will be converted to standard Uber accounts. They will remain part of their family profiles unless they decide to leave.

Where and how

The first cities in the U.S. to get teen accounts include New York and its suburbs, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Kansas City, Mo., along with eight other metro areas. Vancouver, British Columbia, Montreal and 12 other Canadian cities also will have the new service before it expands to other places in the coming months. Uber piloted the feature in San Antonio and other cities, a spokesman said.

On Monday, the option for a family profile should appear in settings under Account in an updated Uber app. Follow the instructions to add a family member and send him or her an invite code.

Teen accounts come alongside other new tools from Uber, including the ability to request vehicles with car seats in New York and Los Angeles. Uber also set up a toll-free number (1-833-USE-UBER) for callers to request a ride on demand or reserve one for a future trip.

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Write to Dalvin Brown at dalvin.brown@wsj.com

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