
Busy Parents Uber Kids Around for a Carpool Alternative - forrest_t
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-31/busy-parents-uber-kids-around-for-a-carpool-alternative.html
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GuiA
Nothing surprising here - as society moves forwards, things that were once
only available to the very rich classes slowly trickle down. Having a
chauffeur for your kids used to be for the 0.1%, Uber and the like have now
made it for the 1% (and even for the 5% in large cities like SF).

When networks of self driving cars start appearing, it'll reduce the cost so
much that it'll trickle down to the 10%, then 50%, then to the 100% - much
like the original car or the fridge did. When I used to work in downtown SF,
taking an Uber from my house to work was only 2x as expensive as the bus, even
though it was more like 4x-6x a few years ago. Over time and as
technology/infrastructure improves this will go down to 1x, and then even
below.

It'll be a great future where people don't own cars anymore (except for a
select few who will for recreation, much like people still ride horses for fun
now), and instead pay a monthly subscription fee for X miles of driving around
per month. Much like cellphones, there'll probably be things like family plans
and so on. Your kids will get a self driving car to pick them up from school,
which will promptly drop them off at home/sports practice/etc. The car will
then just drive to its next request, thus completely removing the need for
parking (which will have a wonderful impact on American urban areas- larger
sidewalks, no more need for giant parking lots everywhere), heavily minimizing
traffic (no stop and go when all cars on the road can sync up in real time),
heavily reducing lethal road accidents, etc.

Self driving vehicles will do for transport what the fridge did for food or
the internet did for communications. It's going to be very, very exciting and
I wish more people realized it so we could make it happen as fast as possible
(e.g. a really forward thinking city could easily make a subpart of its
downtown area open to self driving vehicles exclusively by 2020).

~~~
nickff
As Schumpeter said: “[e]lectric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has
money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to
attend them... The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in
providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach
of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."

Creative destruction, as enabled by captitalism allows everyone to gain access
to the luxuries only previously enjoyed by the rich; it takes time, but we all
our lives are improving in astonishing and unexpected ways.

~~~
tippytop
So which Uber driver is taking the calls to the poorer neighborhoods?

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NewHermes
One of the best, if not the best part of Uber is the payment. No tipping, no
haggling, and no getting screwed, whether you are the driver of passenger.
Don't need to worry about getting stiffed because it's already paid for.

~~~
afarrell
You might not get cash stolen, but might still worry about getting carjacked

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SilasX
>“I’m very happy to have an Uber account,” said the teen. “It shows the trust
that my parents have placed in me and it allows me to get from place to place
in a flash.”

Is I just me, or does that not sound like how a 14-year-old would talk? It
seems more like some PR rep wrote that and asked him to sign off.

~~~
ape4
I agree. Some of it is possible but no 14 year old would say "in a flash".

~~~
icebraining
"No 14 year old", really? In some private schools I know, that's how you're
expected to talk to your teachers, and fourteen-year-old kids are certainly
able to learn to do it.

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bigethan
Not sure how they missed [https://shuddle.us/](https://shuddle.us/) \- which
basically a more vetted uber for kids.

This is a brilliant shift of use for these services, even if it's only used
sometimes (gets a little pricey). Way better than collect calling my Mom and
leaving my name as "I need a pickup from school" so she could refuse the call.
Or waiting for an hour for her to be ready.

~~~
bdcravens
The spelling of that domain name made me shutter. (see what I did there?)

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paul9290
What ... these parents have that much faith to allow strangers/Uber drivers to
pick their kids up?

WoW, not my kid... a driver-less Google or Telsa car thats proven safe sure,
but not random strangers.

Uber can vet their drivers all they want, but there are going to be a few or
more bad eggs(drivers/sex offenders).

~~~
Pxtl
If uber had some kind of UberKid service where you paid a premium for somebody
with a college degree in a childcare-related certification (ECE, educational
assistant, teacher, etc) and thus a proper professional qualifications and a
cert at stake, then it could work but it would have to be a _large_ premium to
attract drivers with that sort of background.

~~~
kretor
Installing a camera would be massively cheaper than the driver having to have
a college degree.

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mml
I uber to work daily (cheaper than parking!). Uber is lovely. Been toying with
sending the kids off to school in one, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I'm
sure uber is aware of the huge pent up demand, and will roll out a family
oriented service in the next few years. And there will be much rejoicing.

Driving kids to and fro is soul crushing in a way that people who don't have
to cannot comprehend.

~~~
fapjacks
Let's give anybody who deals with traffic the benefit of the doubt and say
that they can probably comprehend how much it sucks to be in traffic more
often.

That aside, do you tip your Uber driver? It's interesting for me to find out
that most people don't tip their drivers, and I'd like to know if it's
something you do when going to/from work versus, say, a night out.

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darkstar999
"Rich parents use taxi to haul kids around" \- How is this news, and why is it
worthy of HN?

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jordsmi
Really wish I had uber in my area, sadly I'm not in one of the big cities.

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tokenadult
I have local friends whose daughters are driven to learn many different
things. (I know the friends through my daughter's club soccer team.) One day
we had a conversation about the eventual era of self-driving cars, and I
commented that it would be a convenience to be able to put my daughter in a
self-driving car to go to soccer practice. A mother involved in the
conversation DREADED that prospect, saying, "If I didn't have to drive my
daughter, I wouldn't be able to say to her that she has to limit her
activities. She would get in the car with her cello and go right from soccer
practice to cello practice, and never have any down time." I hadn't thought of
it that way before, but that's right. Sometimes I say no to my daughter not on
the rationale of "that would make you too busy" but rather on the rationale of
"I haven't got time to drive you to that once a week." Some ambitious kids
could lose free time altogether if the cars drive themselves.

EDIT TO REPLY TO FIRST TWO REPLIES:

One of you has said you are not a parent, and I'm asked in the other reply
about free time being time to decide what you want. I acknowledge that both
concerns are valid.

In other words I agree that if my chief rationale for telling my own daughter
that she shouldn't sign up for a sports program is that she will be overtired
and risk injury besides, that is the reason to lead off with in conversation.
(What parents usually find in parenting is that many parenting decisions are
overdetermined, being grounded in multiple rationales, but children also think
their desires have multiple rationales, and parents and children have
conversations with a lot of serve-and-volley about rationales for decisions.)
Similarly, if "we can't afford it" is the fact, rather than just an excuse, I
would say that. We cherish honesty in our family--and, honestly, sometimes the
reason we don't consider other activities for our children is that we would be
run ragged driving them around.

Children have desires that go beyond their ability to estimate the costs and
benefits of pursuing those desires. (Yeah, adults do too, but this limitation
in planning and self-assessment is a big part of the basis for distinguishing
between adults and minors.) When my daughter is pursuing her own schedule with
her own money, I am sure she will continue to delight in challenging herself
and keeping busy. Today, sometimes, as the adult in the room my job is to say,
"Remember that time we signed up for [name of activity] and then you found out
you were too busy to keep doing that?" We let her try out a lot of things, but
sometimes we just have to say, "You need sleep, and you need daytime rest, and
for your own development sometimes you need just to sit and think and not do
structured things all day." The girls I meet through my daughter's soccer team
are all high-ambition girls who push themselves academically (several are in
full-time foreign language immersion school programs) and athletically (they
are in the top team in our soccer club for their age group) and in other
domains. We parents are all proud of them, but we know sometimes we are doing
best by our children when we tell them to take a break.

~~~
guelo
That's a really weird worry. If downtime is needed you could be honest with
your kid instead of relying on some external excuse. Admitedly I'm not a
parent, but lying doesn't seem like a good basis for a parent child
relationship.

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walshemj
Um are there not going to be lots of child protection laws getting in the way.
I can see the Cabbies in London praying the scandal in Rotherham in aid to get
Uber banned

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Nursie
It's just another cab service... why all the fuss?

