Where parents feel like chauffeurs, companies step in

NEW YORK — When Deb Fink heard about a company that could drive her 9-year-old son to his after-school program, she balked at the idea of putting him in a car with a stranger. 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, cofounder and CEO 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 6 or 7 or 8 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. To allay concerns, 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. “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. “Even one sort of negative incident could sink a company, and so I think the care that these companies need to take to ensure that every ride is a good ride is much higher,” said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of The Sharing Economy.