Waymo Lets Teens Ride Robotaxis Alone in Nashville, Not California

Waymo expanded its teen-account program to Nashville this week, letting parents pair 13-to-17-year-olds with solo robotaxi rides, while California regulators sit on a September 25 deadline over parents there already sending kids alone in a service the state says minors can't ride unaccompanied.

On September 22, riding a Waymo alone in Nashville stopped requiring an adult in the car. All it took was turning 13, getting a parent's sign-off, and staying inside the company's 50-square-mile service area there, according to TechCrunch. Nashville is only the second U.S. market to get this option, after Phoenix rolled it out in July 2025.

The setup works the same way in both cities. A parent links a teen's profile to their own Waymo account, and once it's approved, the teenager can hail a fully driverless ride without anyone else along. No adult required. Approved riders can bring up to three friends between 13 and 17, though Waymo hasn't said how it verifies a stranger's age once they climb into the back seat. The company told TechCrunch that Nashville is "first of many" teen markets, depending on how mature local operations are and whether regulators allow it.

In Phoenix, where the program has run for more than a year, parents get an email receipt after every trip their teen takes, and can turn on live trip-sharing to watch the route as it happens. Waymo also trained a subset of its Rider Support staff specifically to handle teen accounts, with the ability to loop a parent in mid-ride if something looks off.

The expansion lands as Waymo's overall ridership climbs fast. Paid trips grew from roughly 50,000 a week in May 2024 to more than 500,000 a week this year, TechCrunch reported. The company now runs more than 4,000 vehicles across roughly 15 metro areas, after adding Denver, San Diego and Tampa on September 1 and Las Vegas two weeks after that. It announced Singapore service on September 17 and has a 2027 launch planned for Tokyo with local partners Nihon Kotsu and GO.

California isn't on the teen-account list. There's a reason for that.

Why California Says No

State regulators have one hard line for autonomous cabs: nobody under 18 rides alone, no matter who booked the trip. That's written into California Public Utilities Commission Decision D.20-11-046. Waymo asked the CPUC to change it. The commission said no.

The rule hasn't stopped parents from testing it anyway. Families in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley suburbs have been sending unaccompanied teenagers off in Waymos. In March the California Gig Workers Union, backed by SEIU 1021, filed a formal complaint accusing the company of knowingly violating its state operating permit. The union asked the CPUC to suspend Waymo's license outright and to set a $5,000 penalty for every future incident.

Waymo's defense rests on a camera, not a policy. An in-cabin AI model flags riders who look underage, and when it does, a live Rider Support agent breaks in over the car's speaker and asks, point blank, whether the rider is over 18, according to reporting by NBC Bay Area. There's no facial recognition involved. The whole system depends on a teenager answering honestly to a voice coming out of the dashboard.

That's a thin guardrail for a rule with real teeth behind it. The CPUC opened a formal rulemaking on autonomous vehicles and unaccompanied minors in August 2025, and in May Waymo filed a supplemental advice letter laying out how it plans to catch underage riders going forward. Regulators weren't satisfied. They suspended review of that filing through September 25, one day from now, while they decide whether Waymo's fix is good enough to trust.

So Nashville gets an official teen account with a parent's name attached to it. California gets something messier: a workaround, a camera that asks nicely, and a deadline nobody's confirmed will resolve anything. Tomorrow is that deadline. Frankly, it may be the most honest part of this story, the one date on the calendar when we find out whether the state's rule actually means what it says.

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