Would you let your kids ride by themselves?
Parents weigh time and safety – and the rules
Having grown up riding the New York City subways by herself at age 11 or 12, suburban New Jersey mom Kasia Bardi was fine the first time her 12-year-old boy, Fabrizio, rode an Uber alone to an “important soccer game.” ❚ Bardi ordered and monitored the five-minute drive, and it probably didn’t hurt that her son, even at that age, was 6 feet tall and looked older than he was. ❚ Now, 15 and 6-foot-4, Bardi’s son rides in an Uber without an adult three to four times a year, though always as a “last resort,” Mom says. ❚ “A comfy monitored ride has got to be way safer than the subway in the ’80s, right?” Bardi asks, though she concedes that her neighbors, and for that matter her husband, aren’t quite as comfortable with the idea as she is. ❚ As it turns out, neither is Uber or Lyft.
Uber explicitly states that anyone under 18 must be accompanied by an adult to ride and that drivers must report when a passenger riding alone is clearly underage. The driver can ask a passenger who looks too young for an ID and is instructed to cancel a trip if that turns out to be the case. (Refusing a trip will not affect a driver’s rating, the company says.)
Lyft takes a similar stance. Uber and Lyft account holders who let unaccompanied minors ride risk losing their accounts.
The reality, though, is that some parents are willing to break the rules of the ride-hailing services. They let their underage kids ride with Uber or Lyft – typically if sharing that ride with friends but sometimes even when they travel alone. Given how many younger teens ride solo, some drivers are obviously looking the other way, too.
Parents worry about safety but may find themselves balancing their concerns against certain realities. They’re stuck at work, say, and need the kids to get dropped off or picked up. They turn to Uber or Lyft or perhaps one of the companies popping up around the country that offer ride services specifically catered to transporting younger children, typically at a higher cost.
Startups such as HopSkipDrive, Kango, Zemcar, Zum and Bubbl tout safe transportation services compared to “Ubers for Kids.”
Jamie Goodwin Barnett, a single mother in Mission, Texas, sees the benefit of Uber and Lyft for kids. “It’s hard to juggle activities and a teenager’s schedule,” she says.
But living so close to the Mexican border makes her nervous, and she’d consider allowing her 14-year-old daughter to ride only if friends were along. “Alone, no,” she says.
In Round Rock, Texas, Lilian Coutinho Castro let her daughter ride alone at 17, but mother and daughter took precautions.
“She always sends me a screenshot of the driver information, and I track her by the Life360 (app that lets parents know where the kids are at all times) during the ride,” Castro says. Mom told her daughter to make sure the Uber or Lyft driver is the same person in the picture registered in the app.
In Sacramento, California, Tracey Donlan’s 16-year-old daughter and 15year-old son rode together after mom got stuck at home while a refrigerator was installed. Both teens have black belts in taekwondo, and still Donlan instructed them to walk to a nearby Starbucks so the driver wouldn’t know where they went to high school. Some parents take a harder line. “I don’t see how letting a child in a vehicle with a stranger is more important than a game or practice or anything else,” says Susie Kinniard, a Louisville, Kentucky, mother of four. Kinniard says that if another parent she knew was unable to pick up the kids, then “we’d just miss the game.”
The recent killing of a college student in South Carolina has some parents concerned, though the circumstances were somewhat different – the victim was 21, and she entered a car that was not an Uber.
Melody Harrison Bergman, a mother of three and self-defense instructor in Richmond, Virginia, worries about predators posing as Uber drivers. “Personally, I don’t think it’s wise to let minors ride unaccompanied – especially not alone,” she says. “As we like to say in our self-defense classes, ‘Three is the new two.’ It’s always safer for kids to travel together as a pack.”