If you live in or around a city and have ever been pregnant, chances are you’ve dealt with the dreaded subway seat debacle.
It usually goes something like this: You’re super tired and super pregnant. You hop into the nearest subway car — back aching, feet swelling, and (most likely) about five minutes away from needing to pee again — and there’s not an empty seat in sight. You pray someone will look up and notice the hugely pregnant woman before them who may or may not have a long way to go until she reaches her stop. But nope. Everyone’s head is glued to their cell phone, and no one wants to budge.
Well, a new app from a London-based tech firm wants to put an end to all that. It’s called the Babee on Board: Offer Seat app, and it’s designed to alert fellow commuters when there’s a mom-to-be nearby who’s in need of a seat.
According to the app’s website, a pregnant mom can open the app and with a quick finger tap, send a push notification to smartphones within a 15-foot radius. The notification will alert riders that the mom is in need of a seat — without her having to awkwardly ask strangers to give up theirs and without them having to look up from their phones. Best of all, the app uses Bluetooth, so it’ll work underground whether or not you have a signal or Wi-Fi.
Pretty genius, huh?
And while you might think that the app was created by a pissed off mom-to-be who rode the subway one too many times while having to stand, you’d be wrong. It’s actually the brainchild of Hew Leith, the CEO of the tech firm 10x, who’s been on the other side of the subway seat debacle himself.
As Leith told Mashable earlier this week:
“A year ago an 80-year-old woman, who sat next to me on a busy tube, got up and offered her seat to a heavily pregnant woman. I was mortified. I was too engrossed on my smartphone to notice anything. So as soon as I let the older woman have my seat, I began racking my brains for a solution. By the time the Tube train pulled into the platform at Moorgate, I had the idea to use beacon Bluetooth notifications so pregnant people could let commuters know they’d like a seat.”
There’s just one little (and probably obvious) catch: The app’s helpfulness hinges on whether or not other subway riders have it; and it may take a while for Babee on Board to really catch on. It’s also not free — Babee on Board currently costs £3.99 ($4.98) to download. But it’s for a good cause: The profits are donated to the children’s charity Project Healthy, which makes it $5 well spent.