CA: Parents are letting teens ride in Waymos without an adult. That poses a dilemma for the company

Laura Mancuso was in a bind.

Her 15-year-old daughter needed a ride from their home in North Beach to a friend's house in the Balboa Park neighborhood. It was after dusk on a Saturday in November. Driving across town would have taken a couple of hours round-trip, Mancuso estimated. In any case, neither she nor her husband could swing it; she was attending an event while he looked after their younger son.

So they hailed a Waymo.

"We just realized it would make our lives easier," Mancuso said, recalling how they installed the app on their daughter's phone, and connected it to her husband's account. The ride cost $39.75 after a 20% promotional discount from Waymo. Other than sticker shock, Mancuso had no complaints.

"My daughter grew up around Waymo," she said. "I don't think she had any hesitation about riding by herself. And in my peer group, it's become totally acceptable to call a Waymo for your teen."

Increasingly, parents in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are relying on robotaxis to transport their unaccompanied children — mostly teenagers who aren't quite old enough for a driver's license. This practice breaks the rules imposed by Waymo and its state regulators, which require that riders be 18 or older unless they have an adult chaperone. But parents have found they're unlikely to get caught, and the need is clear.

Adults with high-powered jobs can't also be part-time chauffeurs. They want quick, convenient transportation options for school, piano lessons, sports practices, homecoming games or dropping off a babysitter at the end of the night. Many view autonomous vehicles as significantly safer than human ride-hail drivers, more dependable than public transit, highly preferable to a 16-year-old friend who just got a license, and definitely essential in situations that might involve alcohol. Not to mention that robotaxis make the ideal of free-range parenting newly attainable.

"It's really become part of our culture," said Megan Schmidt, a mother in the Inner Richmond who considers Waymo a vital form of mobility for her 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. Like other moms, Schmidt said that AVs have helped her reclaim a lot of time, some of which she can spend socializing with other parents.

"Now we'll be hanging out at someone's house, the kids will need a ride, we'll say, 'get them a Waymo,'" Schmidt said, noting that all the kids have the Waymo app on their phones.

The trend has many societal implications. Some parents joke that driving might become an obsolete skill or cease to be a rite of passage. Others revel in their children's newfound independence, and in the sense of security that an autonomous vehicle provides.

"If my daughter calls because she is out on Ocean Beach, which is where kids gather on the weekends, and it's 10 p.m., and I've had a martini, then I'm not going to say, 'Oh, take the 38 (Muni bus),'" Mancuso said. "Apart from the expense, which is annoying, I have no issues" with an AV driving her home.

Despite parents' enthusiasm, the emerging market poses a dilemma for Waymo. As the dominant autonomous vehicle operator in San Francisco and other U.S. cities, the Alphabet-owned company finds itself at the center of every creative new use that people devise for the technology. This one could be lucrative. There's no shortage of tech-savvy kids or moms and dads with disposable income. A child who gravitates to robotaxis at 14 or 15 could become a lifelong customer.

Yet Waymo risks damaging its reputation by catering to or even just turning a blind eye to this group.

"You give people this capability, and of course they're going to try to find the most benefit," said Cameron Gieda, a mobility executive who specializes in autonomous vehicles, and who empathizes with parents who want to avoid the drudgery of driving. "But what if one day you have a kid in a Waymo," he said, "and something really bad happens?"

Enforcement isn't that easy. While Waymo cars have interior cameras that help identify terms of service violations, including those related to age eligibility, it's not an exact science. Representatives of the company say they try to respect customers' privacy. To some degree, the honor system prevails.

"There are instances we are aware of, as some of them are publicly reported, where parents have used Waymos for transportation of minors," the company's attorney, Jack Stoddard, told an administrative judge during a recent California Public Utilities Commission proceeding. Stoddard noted that the parents who book rides for unchaperoned minors are breaching the terms of service, and subject to suspension if discovered.

Such warnings might give some parents anxiety, but not enough to deter them from using Waymo. If anything, demand seems to be growing.

"My daughter has to go to a lot of volleyball practices, games, slumber parties and other engagements, and I want to give her the option to get home when I'm not available," said a Presidio Heights mother who did want to be named, for fear that Waymo would terminate her account. Her 14-year-old daughter hails robotaxis about once a week, a normal rate among her friends, the mother said. From her perspective, robotaxis have given both of them more freedom.

Waymo responded to similar interest in another market, Phoenix, by introducing teen accounts for riders ages 14 to 17 — with the stipulation that each be linked to a parent or guardian. The feature, launched last July, was pitched as a tool for parents who want to give their children more autonomy while still being able to track their trips. It drew instant buzz.

In a blog post, Waymo described the accounts as a way to overcome barriers to teen mobility, including the cost of owning a car, parents who are too tied up to drive and fears about crashes. Access to robotaxis, the blog said, could ease those concerns and help "combat FOMO."

"We have received significant interest from families to allow teenagers to ride independently, and we're working to make this available where applicable laws allow," a Waymo spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Chronicle. According to the spokesperson, hundreds of families in Phoenix count on Waymo teen accounts each week "to give teens needed independence, parents time back, and everyone peace of mind that they're traveling safely."

Whether Waymo or any of its competitors can replicate this feature in San Francisco is unclear. The company would need approval from the California Public Utilities Commission, whose members are midway through a process to make new rules and policies for autonomous vehicles. Children's use of robotaxis was among the items up for discussion, though at this point it's unclear where regulators would land.

Labor leaders, taxi operators and other government agencies have weighed in. In written comments submitted in October, officials at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority recommended that the commission keep its prohibition on unaccompanied minors. It would be premature to allow children into autonomous vehicles by themselves, members of the Transportation Authority argued, "given the nascent state" of the industry.

They have reason to be skeptical. During the Dec. 20 blackouts in San Francisco, Waymo vehicles became immobilized in intersections where stoplights went dark. The strange scenes raised questions about the cars' behavior in a disaster scenario, and incited worry among parents who had planned for Waymo to carry their kids home that day.

"It was apocalyptic," said the Presidio Heights mom, whose daughter found she was unable to book a Waymo home from Stonestown Mall during the outage. Her mom was at an event and had no access to a car to pick the girl up. Ultimately, she spent an hour and a half on Muni, which also faced disruptions.

That experience "was a nightmare," the mom said. But it hasn't shaken the family's trust in robotaxis.

Last week, the daughter called her mom from the Golden Gate Bridge. She and her friends had rented scooters to get there. They were snapping selfies and posting TikTok videos. The mother was charmed by their free-spiritedness.

"Isn't San Francisco a cool place to raise a kid?" she asked, chuckling.

When it started to rain, the girls caught a Waymo back home.

© 2026 the San Francisco Chronicle.
Visit www.sfchronicle.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.