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Washington Post: Harried parents embracing Uber to move kids around town


Debra Landa looks at the cell phone her teenage son, Sam Landa, uses to order an Uber car to his weekly ballet class with the Washington Ballet in Northwest Washington from his home in Alexandria. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)

Washington Post’s Brigid Schulte and Lori Aratani reported on the latest trend of busy parents using Uber to transport children when they can’t.

Altimeter Group Principal Analyst Brian Solis shared his views as an expert tracking the industry and also as a parent using the service.

Brian Solis, a senior analyst with Altimeter Group, a San Mateo, Calif.-based company that examines the impact of new technologies, sees both sides. While he’s comfortable using Uber to transport his teenage son and stepdaughter to their various activities and social engagements, his wife is less sanguine. She worries about their safety given past reports of assaults involving Uber drivers, not to mention what others might think about what using Uber says about them as parents, he said, for not making sacrifices to drive their own kids around.

Still, he argues that the service enables members of his family to do more of the activities they want to do both together and apart. Before, if his stepdaughter wanted to meet up with friends but neither parent was able to drive her, she wasn’t able to go. Now they have option.

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