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29th Dec 2019

New ‘Taxi app’ allows parents to charge their kids for lifts and we need it

Melissa Carton

Children from bigger families 'more likely' to suffer sibling bullying

As parents, we often joke about being taxi drivers to our kids.

Now with this new taxi app we really will be and even better we’ll finally get paid…well sort of.

A recently launched app named Parent Taxi lets parents ‘charge’ their kids for lifts by asking them to do chores in return and I’m all for it.

The idea for the app came about after a study by the carmaker Skoda showed that parents in the UK drive approximately 1,648 additional miles a year bringing their kids to and from after school hobbies and friend’s houses.

That’s the equivalent of £12,565 (almost €14,000)  if London taxi rates were applied.

The investigation also found that 66 per cent of parents felt they acted as a taxi service for their kids, spending around three hours each week driving them to various places.

The Parent Taxi app works tracking how many miles a parent clocks up while driving their kids around on a daily basis.

Similar to a taxi meter, the miles are converted into a fare at the end of the journey and sent to your child’s smartphone.

You can then exchange miles for chores, like cleaning the car, feeding the family pet, tidying the bedroom and doing laundry. On top of all that it’s available for download on both iOS and Android and it’s completely free of charge.