Car seats in Ubers and Lyfts

In a standard Uber or Lyft you are expected to bring and install your own car seat, and in many states the law does not require one at all because vehicles transporting passengers for hire are exempt from the child restraint statute. The exemption is real and it is also irrelevant to the crash: a 25 lb child in a lap belt is in the same danger in a rideshare as in your own car. Treat the exemption as a gap in the law rather than permission.

The practical answer is to carry a seat you can install in under a minute. For a child under 40 lb that is a light forward-facing or convertible seat such as the Cosco Scenera NEXT at about 7 lb; for a child over 40 lb, the BubbleBum inflatable booster weighs 1.2 lb, covers 40-100 lb and 40-59 in, and meets FMVSS 213. Both can live in a backpack. Some cities also offer a car-seat-equipped ride option, but availability is limited and it should never be the plan you depend on.

Child restraint statutes were written around private vehicles, and most carve out taxis and liveries — the "for hire" category — because a taxi cannot be expected to stock seats for every passenger. Rideshare vehicles generally fall into the same bucket. Texas is a clear example: section 545.412 exempts vehicles transporting passengers for hire, which we set out in full on our Texas car seat law page.

Two things follow. First, the exemption varies by state and sometimes by city, so check your own — our state law pages give the statute text rather than a summary. Second, and more important: the exemption changes your legal exposure, not your child's. Nothing about a crash is different because the driver was being paid.

The constraint is not safety rating — every seat sold in the US meets the same federal standard — it is weight and bulk, because you are carrying this thing.

For a newborn or small baby, an infant carrier installed baseless with the vehicle belt is the usual answer, and most carriers permit it — check your manual for the belt routing, because it differs between models and getting it wrong is worse than it looks. The Nuna PIPA RX, for instance, supports a baseless install using European belt routing.

1. 01

   Choose the back seat

   Children ride in the back, and the general guidance is until at least 13. The position behind the front passenger is usually the easiest to reach from the curb.

2. 02

   Route the vehicle belt through the correct path

   Rideshares rarely give you usable access to LATCH anchors, so plan on the belt. The belt path is marked on the seat shell.

3. 03

   Lock the belt and tighten

   Pull the shoulder belt all the way out to engage the locking mode, then feed the slack back in while pressing down on the seat.

4. 04

   Check for under an inch of movement

   Grip at the belt path, not the top of the shell, and pull side to side and front to back.