Waymo Extends Driverless Rides to Teens in Nashville
Waymo will let teenagers as young as 13 use its robotaxi service in Nashville. Nashville is the second city to get teen accounts, after a program that started in Phoenix in 2025. TechCrunch
How teen accounts work
The Nashville program covers riders ages 13 to 17. Each teen account must be linked to a parent or guardian account. Once active, the holder can hail a driverless ride anywhere in Waymo's service area in Nashville. Riders can bring up to three guests ages 13 to 17.
Teens in that age band cannot ride without a Waymo teen account. Waymo requires a teen account linked to a guardian's account for every rider in the group. Families are directed to waymo.com/teens to sign up.
The parental control layer rests on that linkage and on trip telemetry, the live location and status updates sent during a ride. Parents get shared trip status and an automatic ride receipt. Teen riders also get access to specially trained Rider Support agents.
Why Nashville is next
Waymo, a unit of Alphabet, launched its robotaxi service in a 50-square-mile area of Nashville in April 2026. The company had announced on February 9, 2026 that it had gone fully autonomous in Nashville, Tennessee, with no safety driver on board. Reuters In September 2026, Waymo robotaxis in Nashville became available on the Lyft app.
Waymo teen accounts already operate in Metro Phoenix. The company said the Nashville expansion will be the first of many teen launches across multiple markets using the Waymo app in the coming months. It said it will offer teen accounts in cities where its operations are mature and local regulations allow it. That approach fits a company that planned to expand to 20 new cities in 2026. Mashable
Separately, Waymo partnered with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley and the Legacy Institute to study the impact of reliable Waymo rides on summer interns. Waymo reported that access to Waymo rides for commuting cut reported stress from 86% to 43% among the summer interns studied.
The broader context here is deployment strategy. The self-driving task does not change with passenger age. What changes is the trust, onboarding, and accountability model. Linked guardian accounts, shared trip status, receipts, and dedicated support staff address that change without putting a safety driver back in the loop.
In my view, Nashville is worth watching as a template rather than a single market. I watched my own two children move from back-seat passengers to independent users of phones and later cars, and the hard part was less the machine than parental visibility. If parents accept live trip updates as a stand-in for riding along, teen use could fill off-peak hours and build household habits early.
