Where parents feel like chauffeurs, companies step in

WHEN Deb Fink heard about a company that could drive her nine-year-old son to his after-school program, she balked at the idea of putting him in a car with a stranger. But faced with the unrelenting pressure of driving him where he needed to go in the middle of her workday, she decided to give it a try. Now she is sold, and grateful for the handful of ride-hailing companies that have emerged to resolve a dilemma many parents face.

The ride-hailing companies enable parents to summon a car — and in some cases childcare — for their little ones through smartphone apps. Among them are HopSkipDrive, Kango and Zum, hatched as startups primarily led by working moms as ride-hailing becomes a ubiquitous part of digital life. Together, the companies have driven more than 1.4 million children in 16,000 schools, primarily in California but with a growing presence in Colorado, Texas and Washington, D.C.

Sara Schaer, co-founder and chief executive officer of Kango, says her company wants to be a solution as soon as parents run up against the challenge of juggling work and family, rather than having them wait for their child to turn six, seven or eight when “the damage is done” and “you’ve had to dial back on your career, you’ve not been able to enroll them in certain activities that you wanted to get them started early on, or you’ve had to move closer to where the day care is, or have limited your choices in that way.”

The demand for such services has been so high in some places that companies struggle to provide enough drivers.

Companies catering to kids claim to screen drivers more extensively, checking their fingerprints and requiring them to have childcare or parenting experience, sometimes describing them as “nannies on wheels.” Drivers and children are given passwords that must match, and parents can track a child’s whereabouts in real-time through the app.

Zum, which operates in seven states, drives children aged 5 to 18 and HopSkipDrive serves ages six and up. Kango, which operates in California, will pick up babies, and they request — but don’t require — that a caregiver accompany children under two years old.

If something does go wrong, many companies operating in the space require consumers to give up their right to file a lawsuit and to agree to arbitration or pre-arbitration mediation.

Other parents said they wouldn’t take the risk.

“All it takes is one bad person who’s willing to risk their entire Uber career on hurting someone or kidnapping a kid,” said Jeanne Solomon, a Brooklyn mom with a 14-year-old son.

Some ride-hailing services have linked up with schools — shuttling students to sports games and internships and replacing traditional buses — and that has helped them build credibility with parents.

Not everyone can afford the services, however, and some companies have already raised prices. In Fink’s case, the 2.5-mile ride costs $18 a day, more than she could normally afford. But the after-school program her child is enrolled in subsidizes the cost, she said. “I would say it’s an elite service,” Fink said. “It’s something that people can only use sporadically, or if they use it regularly, they need to be pretty wealthy.” (AP)

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