Ashu Manohar brings live parental video to Uber Teen rides

Why it matters

Uber is using safety software to make teen rides a recurring family habit, but adoption will depend on who can access retained footage and who gets a choice.

Ashu Manohar, Uber's director of product management, is turning the driver's phone into a live camera for parents whose teenagers ride alone. In an August 25 announcement, Uber launched live video for parent-linked teen accounts in nine US markets and said nationwide expansion would follow within weeks.

ABC News reported that Manohar's previous product roles included Uber, Twitter, Microsoft and healthcare staffing platform Medely, and that she earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Her new assignment at Uber tackles a familiar product tension: teenagers want independent transportation, while parents want evidence that the ride is going as planned. "Parents consistently tell us they want to feel connected and informed when their teens are on the go," Manohar told ABC News.

The live feed adds video to the map-based tracking already used in family rideshare products. A guardian can now see the teenager and driver inside the vehicle during an active trip, provided the driver has enabled the feature and positioned the front-facing camera correctly.

How the live feed works

When an eligible trip starts, Uber sends a push notification to the parent or guardian linked to the teen's account. Tapping it opens the stream inside the Uber app. Uber notifies both the driver and teenager when viewing begins, and the stream ends automatically when the trip does.

Uber says the feature is live in nine US markets, but it has not publicly named them. Uber has not set a date for completing the national rollout.

Eligible drivers receive onboarding and can preview their camera angle through Uber's Safety Toolkit before accepting a trip, according to ABC News. The stream remains dependent on the driver enabling the feature and positioning the phone's front-facing camera correctly.

Uber says only the linked guardian can watch during the trip. The driver, teenager and guardian cannot retrieve the recording afterward. Uber can review the encrypted recording when investigating a reported safety incident, and Uber told ABC News that encrypted files are normally deleted after 14 days unless attached to a safety report.

That retention policy draws a sharper boundary than Uber's announcement, which says the stream is encrypted without specifying whether it uses end-to-end encryption. TechCrunch also reported that other passengers appearing in the camera's view do not have a way to opt out. The distinction matters because encryption alone does not explain who can decrypt stored footage or under what technical controls.

Uber is building a family account, one safety control at a time

Uber introduced teen accounts in 2023 with live trip tracking, PIN verification and audio recording. Uber says the service is available in more than 50 countries and handles tens of millions of trips each year. Those are Uber's figures: Uber has not published the number of active teen riders, revenue from the product, driver participation or incident rates that would show how the safety tools perform.

The scale claim explains why Manohar's rollout matters to Uber. Teen accounts place Uber inside a family's weekly logistics, covering trips to school, sports and friends rather than the airport and nightlife use cases that built rideshare. A teenager who learns to use Uber through a supervised family profile can eventually graduate into a standard rider account.

Competition for that household relationship is getting more direct. Lyft Teen, Lyft's rideshare product for passengers ages 13 to 17, launched on February 9, 2026. Lyft gives guardians trip tracking, driver details, notifications and direct contact, while its teen rides include PIN verification, route monitoring and audio recording. Lyft's published materials do not list a comparable live camera feed.

Uber's response is a product that makes supervision more immediate and considerably more intimate. Map tracking can show that a car stopped or left its route. Video can show what is happening inside it. That difference could reassure parents who otherwise would not book a ride for a teenager, giving Uber access to trips that families currently handle themselves or assign to specialized transportation providers.

Manohar's product bet is straightforward: greater visibility can turn parental anxiety into permission. The harder task is preserving that reassurance without treating every driver, teenager and accompanying passenger as incidental footage. Uber has built the camera. Its privacy controls will determine whether families and drivers keep it switched on.