Meet the WayMoms.
Clueless San Francisco parents are using robotaxis to shuttle their kids around the city, despite company rules and state regulations forbidding unaccompanied minors.
Families in the city are letting their children ride solo in self-driving Waymo cars, using the autonomous vehicles as babysitters to take their kids to school, sports and weekend hangouts.
Courtesy of Waymo
“It’s really become part of our culture,” Megan Schmidt, mother of a 14-year-old, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We’ll be hanging out at someone’s house, the kids need a ride, we just say, ‘get them a Waymo.’”
Families claim the cars are safer than public transit or a newly licensed teen behind the wheel, and that the convenience is hard to beat. Parents are willing to bend the rules to give their kids independence and reclaim hours otherwise spent driving.
“We just realized it would make our lives easier,” mom Laura Mancuso, who installed the app on her daughter’s phone and linked it to her husband’s account, told the Chronicle. “Apart from the cost, which was annoying, I had no issues at all.”
Waymo has experimented with teen accounts in Phoenix, letting 14- to 17-year-olds ride with parental oversight, but California regulators have yet to approve the feature in the state.