7 ms·

Busy Parents Uber Kids Around for a Carpool Alternative

37 points by forrest_t 12y ago

GuiA 12y ago
Nothing surprising here - as society moves forwards, things that were once only available to the very rich classes slowly trickle down. Having a chauffeur for your kids used to be for the 0.1%, Uber and the like have now made it for the 1% (and even for the 5% in large cities like SF). When networks of self driving cars start appearing, it'll reduce the cost so much that it'll trickle down to the 10%, then 50%, then to the 100% - much like the original car or the fridge did. When I used to work in downtown SF, taking an Uber from my house to work was only 2x as expensive as the bus, even though it was more like 4x-6x a few years ago. Over time and as technology/infrastructure improves this will go down to 1x, and then even below. It'll be a great future where people don't own cars anymore (except for a select few who will for recreation, much like people still ride horses for fun now), and instead pay a monthly subscription fee for X miles of driving around per month. Much like cellphones, there'll probably be things like family plans and so on. Your kids will get a self driving car to pick them up from school, which will promptly drop them off at home/sports practice/etc. The car will then just drive to its next request, thus completely removing the need for parking (which will have a wonderful impact on American urban areas- larger sidewalks, no more need for giant parking lots everywhere), heavily minimizing traffic (no stop and go when all cars on the road can sync up in real time), heavily reducing lethal road accidents, etc. Self driving vehicles will do for transport what the fridge did for food or the internet did for communications. It's going to be very, very exciting and I wish more people realized it so we could make it happen as fast as possible (e.g. a really forward thinking city could easily make a subpart of its downtown area open to self driving vehicles exclusively by 2020).
- revelation 12y ago
  Or a forward moving city bans cars entirely from dense city centers. I've no doubt driverless cars will come, but while they are moving forward, so is the realization that we really don't need all that many cars in cities and that they don't do us any good.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    In dense city centers this problem has already been solved for a long time, hasn't it? Kids easily make their own way around Copenhagen, because it's compact and easy to bike/bus/metro your way around.
    - fapjacks 12y ago
      In the US we can only dream about cities built the way they are in Europe. I am moving to Stockholm in a couple of years and just based on the change in available infrastructure, I will be able to die a happy man.
- WaterSponge 12y ago
  To add to your point and take it a couple steps further. The continuous automation of physical muscle and mind muscles will reduce white and blue collar work. Humans Need Not Apply: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
- nickff 12y ago
  As Schumpeter said: “[e]lectric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them... The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort." Creative destruction, as enabled by captitalism allows everyone to gain access to the luxuries only previously enjoyed by the rich; it takes time, but we all our lives are improving in astonishing and unexpected ways.
  - tippytop 12y ago
    So which Uber driver is taking the calls to the poorer neighborhoods?
    - NewHermes 12y ago
      One of the best, if not the best part of Uber is the payment. No tipping, no haggling, and no getting screwed, whether you are the driver of passenger. Don't need to worry about getting stiffed because it's already paid for.
      - afarrell 12y ago
        You might not get cash stolen, but might still worry about getting carjacked
      - judk 12y ago
        I think tippy meant that Uber drivers are still expensive.
    - pinkyand 12y ago
      Maybe with UberPool(sharing rides with other people on the same route) they'll have more access ? and if you combine that with Uber's SUV service, which enables sharing rides between up to 6 people, you'll get to something more accessible to poor people.
- Retric 12y ago
  A bus full of people is more efficient than a car. So, really what your seeing is cheap prices in off peak times subsided by peak pricing. There are actually lot's of capital intense markets were off peak prices can go negative in extreme cases ex: electricity. ED: Price controls such as is the norm with cab's do distort the market, so Uber's dynamic pricing is probably a good thing as long as it's non discriminatory.
  - skilbjo 12y ago
    I'm not sure I really agree that a bus is more efficient than a carpool ride with Uber, Lyft, or Sidecar would be. Often I've noticed a bus full of people are going a few miles (Sunset neighborhood to Downtown SF), but the bus makes a stop at every small intersection for 1-2 people - inconvenient for the masses. I live in Nob Hill, SF. If I wanted to go to the Mission, it's quite a wait for the Van Ness bus that goes to the Mission, and it takes a long time to go 2 miles because of the numerous stops the bus makes. If instead, I were to take a UberPool/Sidecar Shared Ride, it might be $1 or so more, but I'd get there in a fraction of the time (no walking to the bus stop, no waiting for the bus, no numerous stops). Also, I'm wondering if the the capital expenditure of the car vs the bus makes the car the preferred choice. Eg a Muni bus costs $700,000, but a car for UberPool or others is $10,000-$10,000. I'm certainly not against buses, but for many cases, the technology here can provide smarter, faster transportation. Imagine this: an UberBus/Sidecar Shared Bus or so, that takes just as many people as a full bus would, but without the in-between stops.
    - Retric 12y ago
      http://www.howwedrive.com/2010/06/28/german-efficiency/ http://www.howwedrive.com/2010/06/28/german-efficiency/ Efficiency is a complex topic, buses are often less convenient in large part because there less frequently. In high traffic areas it can actually be faster to take a bus that's showing up every 2-3 minutes than wait for an cab / uber to happen by. The only real downside is it's harder to match demand so you often have large stretches of the day with few riders.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  While it's true that self driving cars are the future of transportation, I think there's a chance that transportation itself will be disrupted by 2025 through the use of VR. If VR replicates a true sense of presence within 10 years, I think we're going to see a large decrease in people using all modes of transportation. I'm very interested to see how the next 10-15 years play out.
tokenadult 12y ago
I have local friends whose daughters are driven to learn many different things. (I know the friends through my daughter's club soccer team.) One day we had a conversation about the eventual era of self-driving cars, and I commented that it would be a convenience to be able to put my daughter in a self-driving car to go to soccer practice. A mother involved in the conversation DREADED that prospect, saying, "If I didn't have to drive my daughter, I wouldn't be able to say to her that she has to limit her activities. She would get in the car with her cello and go right from soccer practice to cello practice, and never have any down time." I hadn't thought of it that way before, but that's right. Sometimes I say no to my daughter not on the rationale of "that would make you too busy" but rather on the rationale of "I haven't got time to drive you to that once a week." Some ambitious kids could lose free time altogether if the cars drive themselves. EDIT TO REPLY TO FIRST TWO REPLIES: One of you has said you are not a parent, and I'm asked in the other reply about free time being time to decide what you want. I acknowledge that both concerns are valid. In other words I agree that if my chief rationale for telling my own daughter that she shouldn't sign up for a sports program is that she will be overtired and risk injury besides, that is the reason to lead off with in conversation. (What parents usually find in parenting is that many parenting decisions are overdetermined, being grounded in multiple rationales, but children also think their desires have multiple rationales, and parents and children have conversations with a lot of serve-and-volley about rationales for decisions.) Similarly, if "we can't afford it" is the fact, rather than just an excuse, I would say that. We cherish honesty in our family--and, honestly, sometimes the reason we don't consider other activities for our children is that we would be run ragged driving them around. Children have desires that go beyond their ability to estimate the costs and benefits of pursuing those desires. (Yeah, adults do too, but this limitation in planning and self-assessment is a big part of the basis for distinguishing between adults and minors.) When my daughter is pursuing her own schedule with her own money, I am sure she will continue to delight in challenging herself and keeping busy. Today, sometimes, as the adult in the room my job is to say, "Remember that time we signed up for [name of activity] and then you found out you were too busy to keep doing that?" We let her try out a lot of things, but sometimes we just have to say, "You need sleep, and you need daytime rest, and for your own development sometimes you need just to sit and think and not do structured things all day." The girls I meet through my daughter's soccer team are all high-ambition girls who push themselves academically (several are in full-time foreign language immersion school programs) and athletically (they are in the top team in our soccer club for their age group) and in other domains. We parents are all proud of them, but we know sometimes we are doing best by our children when we tell them to take a break.
bigethan 12y ago
Not sure how they missed https://shuddle.us/ https://shuddle.us/ - which basically a more vetted uber for kids. This is a brilliant shift of use for these services, even if it's only used sometimes (gets a little pricey). Way better than collect calling my Mom and leaving my name as "I need a pickup from school" so she could refuse the call. Or waiting for an hour for her to be ready.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  The spelling of that domain name made me shutter. (see what I did there?)
SilasX 12y ago
>“I’m very happy to have an Uber account,” said the teen. “It shows the trust that my parents have placed in me and it allows me to get from place to place in a flash.” Is I just me, or does that not sound like how a 14-year-old would talk? It seems more like some PR rep wrote that and asked him to sign off.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  A fourteen-year-old brought up with that much responsibility and freedom might very well talk that way. I've seen it done among my homeschooling friends.
- rwc 12y ago
  You're underestimating 14-year-olds.
- ape4 12y ago
  I agree. Some of it is possible but no 14 year old would say "in a flash".
  - icebraining 12y ago
    "No 14 year old", really? In some private schools I know, that's how you're expected to talk to your teachers, and fourteen-year-old kids are certainly able to learn to do it.
  - mturmon 12y ago
    I have to say I agree too. The phrase "the trust my parents have placed in me" also seems stilted.
- untog 12y ago
  14 year olds can sound very precocious in the right environment. Source: I was that 14 year old once upon a time.
- gizmo686 12y ago
  That sounds like a 14-year-old being interviewed.
mml 12y ago
I uber to work daily (cheaper than parking!). Uber is lovely. Been toying with sending the kids off to school in one, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I'm sure uber is aware of the huge pent up demand, and will roll out a family oriented service in the next few years. And there will be much rejoicing. Driving kids to and fro is soul crushing in a way that people who don't have to cannot comprehend.
- fapjacks 12y ago
  Let's give anybody who deals with traffic the benefit of the doubt and say that they can probably comprehend how much it sucks to be in traffic more often. That aside, do you tip your Uber driver? It's interesting for me to find out that most people don't tip their drivers, and I'd like to know if it's something you do when going to/from work versus, say, a night out.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
walshemj 12y ago
Um are there not going to be lots of child protection laws getting in the way. I can see the Cabbies in London praying the scandal in Rotherham in aid to get Uber banned
jordsmi 12y ago
Really wish I had uber in my area, sadly I'm not in one of the big cities.
Nursie 12y ago
It's just another cab service... why all the fuss?
darkstar999 12y ago
"Rich parents use taxi to haul kids around" - How is this news, and why is it worthy of HN?
paul9290 12y ago
What ... these parents have that much faith to allow strangers/Uber drivers to pick their kids up? WoW, not my kid... a driver-less Google or Telsa car thats proven safe sure, but not random strangers. Uber can vet their drivers all they want, but there are going to be a few or more bad eggs(drivers/sex offenders).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 12y ago
  Not routinely but I sometimes took taxis to get home from school when I was probably 12 or younger. And that was long before cell phones or anything of that variety. And I imagine somewhere like New York City many kids routinely walk to school.
- emmett 12y ago
  Would you let your child interact with any stranger alone under any circumstance? If so, I don't see what the big deal about Uber or Lyft is in particular. If not, that seems awfully sheltered. We're talking about teens here, not 5 year olds.
  - paul9290 12y ago
    It's interesting, but I wouldn't let my kids under 15 get picked up by random strangers. Further I'm wondering if there is only a very small select amount of parents doing this and this more PR then a major reality.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  If uber had some kind of UberKid service where you paid a premium for somebody with a college degree in a childcare-related certification (ECE, educational assistant, teacher, etc) and thus a proper professional qualifications and a cert at stake, then it could work but it would have to be a large premium to attract drivers with that sort of background.
  - 12y ago

37 points by forrest_t 12y ago

GuiA 12y ago

Nothing surprising here - as society moves forwards, things that were once only available to the very rich classes slowly trickle down. Having a chauffeur for your kids used to be for the 0.1%, Uber and the like have now made it for the 1% (and even for the 5% in large cities like SF). When networks of self driving cars start appearing, it'll reduce the cost so much that it'll trickle down to the 10%, then 50%, then to the 100% - much like the original car or the fridge did. When I used to work in downtown SF, taking an Uber from my house to work was only 2x as expensive as the bus, even though it was more like 4x-6x a few years ago. Over time and as technology/infrastructure improves this will go down to 1x, and then even below. It'll be a great future where people don't own cars anymore (except for a select few who will for recreation, much like people still ride horses for fun now), and instead pay a monthly subscription fee for X miles of driving around per month. Much like cellphones, there'll probably be things like family plans and so on. Your kids will get a self driving car to pick them up from school, which will promptly drop them off at home/sports practice/etc. The car will then just drive to its next request, thus completely removing the need for parking (which will have a wonderful impact on American urban areas- larger sidewalks, no more need for giant parking lots everywhere), heavily minimizing traffic (no stop and go when all cars on the road can sync up in real time), heavily reducing lethal road accidents, etc. Self driving vehicles will do for transport what the fridge did for food or the internet did for communications. It's going to be very, very exciting and I wish more people realized it so we could make it happen as fast as possible (e.g. a really forward thinking city could easily make a subpart of its downtown area open to self driving vehicles exclusively by 2020).

revelation 12y ago
Or a forward moving city bans cars entirely from dense city centers. I've no doubt driverless cars will come, but while they are moving forward, so is the realization that we really don't need all that many cars in cities and that they don't do us any good.
- _delirium 12y ago
  In dense city centers this problem has already been solved for a long time, hasn't it? Kids easily make their own way around Copenhagen, because it's compact and easy to bike/bus/metro your way around.
  - fapjacks 12y ago
    In the US we can only dream about cities built the way they are in Europe. I am moving to Stockholm in a couple of years and just based on the change in available infrastructure, I will be able to die a happy man.
WaterSponge 12y ago
To add to your point and take it a couple steps further. The continuous automation of physical muscle and mind muscles will reduce white and blue collar work. Humans Need Not Apply: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
nickff 12y ago
As Schumpeter said: “[e]lectric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them... The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort." Creative destruction, as enabled by captitalism allows everyone to gain access to the luxuries only previously enjoyed by the rich; it takes time, but we all our lives are improving in astonishing and unexpected ways.
- tippytop 12y ago
  So which Uber driver is taking the calls to the poorer neighborhoods?
  - NewHermes 12y ago
    One of the best, if not the best part of Uber is the payment. No tipping, no haggling, and no getting screwed, whether you are the driver of passenger. Don't need to worry about getting stiffed because it's already paid for.
    - afarrell 12y ago
      You might not get cash stolen, but might still worry about getting carjacked
    - judk 12y ago
      I think tippy meant that Uber drivers are still expensive.
  - pinkyand 12y ago
    Maybe with UberPool(sharing rides with other people on the same route) they'll have more access ? and if you combine that with Uber's SUV service, which enables sharing rides between up to 6 people, you'll get to something more accessible to poor people.
Retric 12y ago
A bus full of people is more efficient than a car. So, really what your seeing is cheap prices in off peak times subsided by peak pricing. There are actually lot's of capital intense markets were off peak prices can go negative in extreme cases ex: electricity. ED: Price controls such as is the norm with cab's do distort the market, so Uber's dynamic pricing is probably a good thing as long as it's non discriminatory.
- skilbjo 12y ago
  I'm not sure I really agree that a bus is more efficient than a carpool ride with Uber, Lyft, or Sidecar would be. Often I've noticed a bus full of people are going a few miles (Sunset neighborhood to Downtown SF), but the bus makes a stop at every small intersection for 1-2 people - inconvenient for the masses. I live in Nob Hill, SF. If I wanted to go to the Mission, it's quite a wait for the Van Ness bus that goes to the Mission, and it takes a long time to go 2 miles because of the numerous stops the bus makes. If instead, I were to take a UberPool/Sidecar Shared Ride, it might be $1 or so more, but I'd get there in a fraction of the time (no walking to the bus stop, no waiting for the bus, no numerous stops). Also, I'm wondering if the the capital expenditure of the car vs the bus makes the car the preferred choice. Eg a Muni bus costs $700,000, but a car for UberPool or others is $10,000-$10,000. I'm certainly not against buses, but for many cases, the technology here can provide smarter, faster transportation. Imagine this: an UberBus/Sidecar Shared Bus or so, that takes just as many people as a full bus would, but without the in-between stops.
  - Retric 12y ago
    http://www.howwedrive.com/2010/06/28/german-efficiency/ http://www.howwedrive.com/2010/06/28/german-efficiency/ Efficiency is a complex topic, buses are often less convenient in large part because there less frequently. In high traffic areas it can actually be faster to take a bus that's showing up every 2-3 minutes than wait for an cab / uber to happen by. The only real downside is it's harder to match demand so you often have large stretches of the day with few riders.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sixQuarks 12y ago
While it's true that self driving cars are the future of transportation, I think there's a chance that transportation itself will be disrupted by 2025 through the use of VR. If VR replicates a true sense of presence within 10 years, I think we're going to see a large decrease in people using all modes of transportation. I'm very interested to see how the next 10-15 years play out.

tokenadult 12y ago

I have local friends whose daughters are driven to learn many different things. (I know the friends through my daughter's club soccer team.) One day we had a conversation about the eventual era of self-driving cars, and I commented that it would be a convenience to be able to put my daughter in a self-driving car to go to soccer practice. A mother involved in the conversation DREADED that prospect, saying, "If I didn't have to drive my daughter, I wouldn't be able to say to her that she has to limit her activities. She would get in the car with her cello and go right from soccer practice to cello practice, and never have any down time." I hadn't thought of it that way before, but that's right. Sometimes I say no to my daughter not on the rationale of "that would make you too busy" but rather on the rationale of "I haven't got time to drive you to that once a week." Some ambitious kids could lose free time altogether if the cars drive themselves. EDIT TO REPLY TO FIRST TWO REPLIES: One of you has said you are not a parent, and I'm asked in the other reply about free time being time to decide what you want. I acknowledge that both concerns are valid. In other words I agree that if my chief rationale for telling my own daughter that she shouldn't sign up for a sports program is that she will be overtired and risk injury besides, that is the reason to lead off with in conversation. (What parents usually find in parenting is that many parenting decisions are overdetermined, being grounded in multiple rationales, but children also think their desires have multiple rationales, and parents and children have conversations with a lot of serve-and-volley about rationales for decisions.) Similarly, if "we can't afford it" is the fact, rather than just an excuse, I would say that. We cherish honesty in our family--and, honestly, sometimes the reason we don't consider other activities for our children is that we would be run ragged driving them around. Children have desires that go beyond their ability to estimate the costs and benefits of pursuing those desires. (Yeah, adults do too, but this limitation in planning and self-assessment is a big part of the basis for distinguishing between adults and minors.) When my daughter is pursuing her own schedule with her own money, I am sure she will continue to delight in challenging herself and keeping busy. Today, sometimes, as the adult in the room my job is to say, "Remember that time we signed up for [name of activity] and then you found out you were too busy to keep doing that?" We let her try out a lot of things, but sometimes we just have to say, "You need sleep, and you need daytime rest, and for your own development sometimes you need just to sit and think and not do structured things all day." The girls I meet through my daughter's soccer team are all high-ambition girls who push themselves academically (several are in full-time foreign language immersion school programs) and athletically (they are in the top team in our soccer club for their age group) and in other domains. We parents are all proud of them, but we know sometimes we are doing best by our children when we tell them to take a break.

bigethan 12y ago

Not sure how they missed https://shuddle.us/ https://shuddle.us/ - which basically a more vetted uber for kids. This is a brilliant shift of use for these services, even if it's only used sometimes (gets a little pricey). Way better than collect calling my Mom and leaving my name as "I need a pickup from school" so she could refuse the call. Or waiting for an hour for her to be ready.

bdcravens 12y ago
The spelling of that domain name made me shutter. (see what I did there?)

SilasX 12y ago

>“I’m very happy to have an Uber account,” said the teen. “It shows the trust that my parents have placed in me and it allows me to get from place to place in a flash.” Is I just me, or does that not sound like how a 14-year-old would talk? It seems more like some PR rep wrote that and asked him to sign off.

tokenadult 12y ago
A fourteen-year-old brought up with that much responsibility and freedom might very well talk that way. I've seen it done among my homeschooling friends.
rwc 12y ago
You're underestimating 14-year-olds.
ape4 12y ago
I agree. Some of it is possible but no 14 year old would say "in a flash".
- icebraining 12y ago
  "No 14 year old", really? In some private schools I know, that's how you're expected to talk to your teachers, and fourteen-year-old kids are certainly able to learn to do it.
- mturmon 12y ago
  I have to say I agree too. The phrase "the trust my parents have placed in me" also seems stilted.
untog 12y ago
14 year olds can sound very precocious in the right environment. Source: I was that 14 year old once upon a time.
gizmo686 12y ago
That sounds like a 14-year-old being interviewed.

mml 12y ago

I uber to work daily (cheaper than parking!). Uber is lovely. Been toying with sending the kids off to school in one, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I'm sure uber is aware of the huge pent up demand, and will roll out a family oriented service in the next few years. And there will be much rejoicing. Driving kids to and fro is soul crushing in a way that people who don't have to cannot comprehend.

fapjacks 12y ago
Let's give anybody who deals with traffic the benefit of the doubt and say that they can probably comprehend how much it sucks to be in traffic more often. That aside, do you tip your Uber driver? It's interesting for me to find out that most people don't tip their drivers, and I'd like to know if it's something you do when going to/from work versus, say, a night out.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

walshemj 12y ago

Um are there not going to be lots of child protection laws getting in the way. I can see the Cabbies in London praying the scandal in Rotherham in aid to get Uber banned

jordsmi 12y ago

Really wish I had uber in my area, sadly I'm not in one of the big cities.

Nursie 12y ago

It's just another cab service... why all the fuss?

darkstar999 12y ago

"Rich parents use taxi to haul kids around" - How is this news, and why is it worthy of HN?

paul9290 12y ago

What ... these parents have that much faith to allow strangers/Uber drivers to pick their kids up? WoW, not my kid... a driver-less Google or Telsa car thats proven safe sure, but not random strangers. Uber can vet their drivers all they want, but there are going to be a few or more bad eggs(drivers/sex offenders).

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ghaff 12y ago
Not routinely but I sometimes took taxis to get home from school when I was probably 12 or younger. And that was long before cell phones or anything of that variety. And I imagine somewhere like New York City many kids routinely walk to school.
emmett 12y ago
Would you let your child interact with any stranger alone under any circumstance? If so, I don't see what the big deal about Uber or Lyft is in particular. If not, that seems awfully sheltered. We're talking about teens here, not 5 year olds.
- paul9290 12y ago
  It's interesting, but I wouldn't let my kids under 15 get picked up by random strangers. Further I'm wondering if there is only a very small select amount of parents doing this and this more PR then a major reality.
Pxtl 12y ago
If uber had some kind of UberKid service where you paid a premium for somebody with a college degree in a childcare-related certification (ECE, educational assistant, teacher, etc) and thus a proper professional qualifications and a cert at stake, then it could work but it would have to be a large premium to attract drivers with that sort of background.
- 12y ago