Uber announced a new ride type that allows minors to take an Uber ride without being accompanied by an adult.
With UberX Teen, parents and guardians can request an Uber for their teens aged 13–17.
Prior to UberX Teen, unaccompanied minors were not allowed to use Uber under any circumstances.
If UberX Teen isn’t in your city yet, teens and children are still prohibited from riding without an adult.
Uber drivers: You are free to opt out of UberX Teen, and you should only allow minor riders if the ride request is UberX Teen.
Read on to learn more about UberX Teen and how you can request an Uber for a teen.
UberX Teen: Rides for teens aged 13–17
With the UberX Teen ride type, parents and guardians can request an Uber ride for approved teens aged 13–17.
As a parent or guardian, you request the ride from your account, and your teen can hop in the Uber by themselves.
That could mean getting picked up from school, a friend’s house, or anywhere else your teen might be.
Your teen can’t request the ride themselves—only the approved parent/guardian account can request the ride.
But will this be safe for teens? Uber only invites highly-rated drivers to join the program.
You can track the ride from your phone, and you can have your teen rider enable audio recording in their Uber app if you want extra protection.
Where is UberX Teen available?
Currently, UberX Teen is available in some areas of Arizona. We will update this article as the service rolls out to new cities.
UberX Teen not available? Unaccompanied minors can’t request rides or ride alone!
Unaccompanied minors can only use Uber via UberX Teen.
So in all other areas that don’t have UberX Teen, riders under 18 can’t use Uber.
Minors can’t request rides, and minors can’t ride alone in an Uber even if a parent or guardian says that they requested the ride.
Drivers can cancel a ride if they believe the rider is an unaccompanied minor.
Only request rides for minors if UberX Teen is available in your area.
Unanswered questions about UberX Teen
Uber hasn’t announced full details yet. Here’s what we still want to know:
- How can parents add a teen to their profile?
- What are the exact qualifications for drivers who can receive teen requests?
- Can other teens ride in the car, or only the approved teen?
More help for Uber users
- The best ways to contact Uber customer service
- How much does Uber cost?
- What’s the difference between the Uber ride types?
For Uber drivers: How UberX Teen works
Where available, you may see ride requests with the UberX Teen label.
The riders for UberX Teen will be unaccompanied minors aged 13–17.
Only parents or guardian accounts can request UberX Teen rides, and the teen riders are approved account holders that were added by their parent/guardian.
You are free to decline the requests, and you can opt out of UberX Teen by going to the preferences area of the driver app to disable UberX Teen requests.
Pay for UberX Teen is the same as UberX. There is no additional pay.
Unaccompanied minors outside of UberX Teen are still prohibited
Solo teen riders are only permitted under the UberX Teen ride type.
If a rider looks underage and the request is not Uber X Teen, you can cancel the trip and select ‘unaccompanied minor’ as the reason.
For your own safety and the safety of your riders, you can enable audio recording in the driver app settings.
The Uber driver app will record and store audio during your rides when audio is enabled.
See the full UberX Teen announcement for drivers
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