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Uber Is Letting Parents Keep an Eye on Their Teens Through a Driver’s Phone Camera
Just in time for back-to-school season, Uber has launched a new feature that gives parents a live view inside their teens’ rides from pickup to drop-off.
The company announced Tuesday that it is rolling out live video streaming for Uber teen accounts, designed to give parents more “peace of mind.”
“With this, parents can check in and see how their teen’s rides are going on demand by accessing a live video stream of their ride,” Uber said in a press release . “Through the driver’s smartphone front-facing camera, parents will be able to see their teen in the car in real time.”
When the feature is enabled by a driver, the parent or guardian linked to a teen account will receive a notification after the trip begins letting them know live video is available. They can then tap the notification to watch the ride from within the Uber app.
Both the teen and the driver will be notified in their respective apps when a parent starts watching. The video stream automatically ends when the trip is completed.
The feature is just the latest safety tool for Uber’s teen accounts , which the company launched in 2023 and says are now available in more than 50 countries.
Teen accounts allow kids ages 13 to 17 to request their own rides while being linked to a parent or guardian’s account. According to Uber, teen riders are matched only with highly rated and experienced drivers. It also notes that drivers on the platform undergo background checks and are rescreened annually.
Teen accounts also come with several built-in safety features. Parents receive real-time updates and can track rides in the app. Teens have to give their driver a unique PIN before a trip can begin, helping ensure they’re getting into the right car. Uber’s RideCheck feature can also detect if a trip goes off-course or stops unexpectedly and will check in through the app to see everything is fine.
Additionally, there’s already an opt-in audio recording feature, which allows drivers and riders to record audio of the trip in order to “encourage safe, comfortable interactions.”
Drivers who enable the new live video feature will receive special onboarding, including recommendations for positioning their phones, according to ABC News . They can also preview the view of the stream through the Safety Toolkit in the Uber app.
The ability to remotely watch a teen’s ride will undoubtedly be welcomed by some parents, but turning a driver’s personal phone into a live camera also raises some obvious privacy questions.
Uber appears to have anticipated some of these, with the company saying only the parent or guardian linked to the teen’s account can view the live stream.
But the video doesn’t disappear when the trip ends.
Uber told Good Morning America that an encrypted recording of the stream is stored on its servers for 14 days.
“The encrypted video file is stored on Uber’s server, and Uber may only access the decryption key to investigate a safety incident,” Ashu Manohar, Uber’s director of product management, told Good Morning America.
The live video feature went live Tuesday in nine U.S. markets: Atlanta, Phoenix, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham, Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Cleveland, Rhode Island and El Paso.
Uber says it plans to roll it out nationwide over the coming weeks.
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