Uber is now letting parents watch their teens via a live stream of their rides.
The option uses the rear-facing camera on Uber drivers' phones, allowing a guardian to view a live video of the trip, the ride-hailing company said on Tuesday.
Uber is debuting the feature as a new school year ramps up. It's "designed to give parents added peace of mind when their teen is on the go," the company said.
When an Uber trip begins for a teen user, their guardian receives a push notification that live video is available. The teen and their guardian have to be registered as such in the Uber app.
The driver and teen receive a notification once a guardian starts viewing the livestream, Uber said. No one, including the teen, the driver, or the guardian, can access the video after the ride ends.
"The feature is designed for quick check-ins, giving parents another way to feel confident everything on their teen's trip is going smoothly," Uber said.
The live-streaming feature is being tested in nine cities: Atlanta, Phoenix, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland, Rhode Island, and El Paso. Uber said that the feature will roll out across the US "over the coming weeks."
Uber is unveiling the feature as it continues to face questions about rider safety. The company is still defending itself from thousands of claims that some of its drivers sexually assaulted riders.
Uber launched its teen accounts feature in 2023. Since then, users of the feature have completed "tens of millions" of trips on the app, the company said. The company already offers some safety features for teen users, such as optional audio recording.
The company has grown its teen rides business as the number of teenagers with driver's licenses has declined over the past two decades.
Instead of driving themselves and buying their first cars, some teenagers are turning to ride-hailing services like Uber, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on a podcast interview last year.
Tell us if you would send your child in an Uber now that live video is being offered:
Do you have a story idea about Uber? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
Read next
Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.
