Uber Without The Smartphone

With inspiration from a nonprofit in Atlanta, the app is becoming more senior-friendly

- JeffGreen, with Eric Newcomer

Bob Carr swears he didn’t set out to hack Uber. The 67-year-old Atlantan just wanted to extend the ride-hailing app’s convenience to hundreds of interested seniors who weren’t big on smartphones. To work around the software’s limits, in 2014 he started Common Courtesy Inc., a small nonprofit that created multiple Uber accounts to book rides on behalf of other people. “I had five different mobile phones with five different Uber accounts,” Carr says. “We called it reengineering.” He and his wife, Anne, gave the group accounts related names like “Vets” or “Church.”

Uber Technologies Inc. noticed, but this isn’t that kind of Uber story. Instead of sending the Carrs a panicked cease-and-desist letter, the company last year dispatched five engineers to study Common Courtesy and some similar ventures. It’s since built the one-phone, multiple-rides workaround directly into its app, as a feature called Uber Central that underpins more than 30 affiliated “chapters” of Common Courtesy across the country.

“We were pushing Uber into places it hadn’t been,” Carr says. “It was not their wheelhouse.”

A decade ago, Carr got the idea for Common Courtesy after witnessing a close call with a senior who had just gotten behind the wheel after leaving a safe-driving class. In 2007 he and Anne patented the idea for a volunteer driving service coordinated via text messages, but they had trouble recruiting drivers. They picked up the project again when they discovered Uber in 2014. By the time company engineers spent three days with the couple in May 2016, the Carrs had a long wish list of ways Uber could build them a smoother model, starting with the ability to book and monitor several rides from one phone.