Driver guide

HALO drivers are typically other parents in the community, neighbourhood volunteers, vetted club coaches, or a school's own staff drivers — people already trusted by the families booking rides. There's no public driver signup; every driver applies inside a community and is personally reviewed by that community's admin.

To apply you'll need:

• A current driving licence valid in the country your community operates in
• Proof of insurance covering the vehicle you'll use
• A phone with a working camera (for document photos and in-ride location)
• An existing relationship with the community — invite code, member email, or admin approval

Open the web app at community.halorides.app or install the iOS / Android app. The first launch shows the same three-slide welcome — Trust, Safety, Control — as the parent flow; sign in with email, Google, or Apple, and verify your email from the link you receive.

1. Tap Get started.
2. Sign in with email, Google, or Apple.
3. Verify the email from your inbox.
4. Complete the small profile: full name, phone, region.

After your profile is set up, HALO asks what role you're playing in this community. Pick Driver. If you're also booking rides for your own kids, that's fine — you can hold both Parent and Driver hats on the same account, with children added to the parent side.

HALO doesn't have a public "become a driver" signup that anyone on the internet can fill out. You apply inside a community you already belong to — a school, club, neighbourhood, faith group, or camp — and your community admin reviews each application personally.

1. Make sure you've joined the community first (Communities → Join with code).
2. Open Drive from the bottom-nav.
3. You'll see a Become a driver entry — tap it.
4. The application starts. The form auto-saves a draft as you go, so backgrounding the app to grab a photo won't lose your progress.

The application asks for the car parents will see and ride in:

• Make and model — e.g. Toyota Sienna.
• Year and colour.
• Registration / plate.
• Seats available. Don't count the driver — only passenger seats.
• Photo of the vehicle from the front — helps parents spot it at pickup.

You can change vehicle later from Drive → Vehicle if you switch cars. Re-verification by your community admin is usually fast.

On the documents step you upload two images — straight from your phone camera or photo library.

1. Driving licence (front side). Make sure all four corners are visible and the text is legible — HALO will reject a fuzzy photo.
2. Proof of insurance. The current policy schedule or insurance certificate showing the registered vehicle.

Both documents are encrypted in storage and visible only to your community admin during review. HALO will never sell, syndicate, or share them. Once your application is approved, the admin can still consult them if needed (e.g. licence renewal reminders) but the documents are not in any public profile.

Once you submit, the application moves to Pending review. Your community admin sees it in their admin console alongside the documents, your vehicle details, and the community context they already have on you (member since, prior rides, any flags). They approve or reject.

• Approved. The Verified badge appears on your driver profile. Parents see it before they book. You can immediately start posting carpools.
• Rejected with note. Your admin writes a short reason — usually a fixable thing (blurry licence photo, expired insurance). You can edit and re-submit.
• Revoked later. If your licence lapses, your insurance changes, or your community status changes, your admin can revoke verification with a written note. Active bookings are cancelled and re-offered.

HALO is most useful when you post the trips you're already driving — the school run on weekdays, the Saturday match, the camp drop-off. Other parents in your community see the seats and book against them.

1. From Drive → Carpools, tap Post a carpool.
2. Origin and destination — set the start point (usually your home or a community hub) and the destination (the school, club, etc.).
3. Date and time. Single date or a recurring schedule (weekdays, every Saturday, every other Tuesday).
4. Seats available. Defaults to your vehicle's registered passenger seat count.
5. Pickup window. The grace window parents can request a pickup inside — usually ±15 minutes around your departure time.
6. Optional: Notes ("will wait at gate B", "bring booster seat if needed").
7. Submit. The carpool appears in your community's Carpools tab; parents can book seats from there.

Two ways a ride lands in your queue:

• Parent booked into your open carpool. They picked a seat, you get a notification. You can accept on the spot (default), or hold for review.
• Parent submitted a standalone request. HALO surfaces the request to drivers whose acceptance radius and schedule match. You get a notification with rider, pickup, and community context.

You choose:

1. Accept. The booking is yours; the parent gets a confirmation push.
2. Decline. The request goes back into the pool for another driver. Use this freely — there's no automatic matching that overrides your judgement.
3. Propose a different time. Counter with a time that works for you. Parent can accept your counter or cancel.

Don't want requests from across town? Set an acceptance radius in Drive → Settings → Acceptance. Anything between 5 km and 205 km. Requests with a pickup outside the radius are filtered before they ever reach you.

You can also filter on:

• Days and time windows you're willing to drive
• Community — when you drive for multiple communities, you can toggle one off temporarily without leaving it
• Child age bands — if you're only comfortable with school-age kids, set the minimum

During an active ride, the app shares your location with the rider's parent in near-real time, shows your route, and gives you tap-to-confirm controls at each pickup. The app handles the location updates automatically — don't fiddle with your phone while driving.

The flow:

1. Tap Start ride when you set off toward pickup. The parent gets a notification.
2. At pickup, tap Arrived. Parent gets a notification.
3. When the child is in the car and seatbelted, tap Boarded. Parent gets a notification.
4. If the child isn't there, tap No-show instead. Parent and admin are notified; the ride is cancelled.
5. At destination, tap Arrived at destination. Parent gets the drop-off notification.
6. Tap Ride complete to close the ride. Live location is cleared the moment you do.

A carpool with two or three children at different addresses doesn't need you to plan the pickup order — HALO does it using Google's Routes API to pick the most efficient sequence. You see the optimised order on the in-ride map and just follow it.

If a parent cancels or no-shows mid-route, the remaining stops are re-optimised on the fly. You don't need to do anything; the app updates the map.

My Schedule (under Drive → Schedule) is your unified timeline of every carpool you've offered or accepted across every community you belong to. List view + calendar view; tap any item for the full ride detail.

Export it as an iCalendar (.ics) feed so it lives in the calendar app you already use — Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook. Tap Subscribe in the schedule view and HALO gives you a URL you paste into the calendar app. Updates flow through automatically.

One HALO account, multiple communities. You can drive for your kids' school in the morning, your sports club on Saturdays, and a neighbour's book group on weekday evenings — all from the same app.

• Each community has its own verification — apply separately to each.
• Acceptance filters are per-community — you can mute one without leaving it.
• Schedule view shows all communities stacked together with a community badge on each item.

Plans change. From the carpool detail screen, tap Cancel carpool or Reschedule any time before it starts. HALO asks for a short reason — illness, vehicle issue, community change. Parents who booked are notified immediately so they can find an alternative.

Cancellation isn't a black mark on your driver profile — but chronic last-minute cancellation will be flagged to your community admin. Use it honestly.

If anything goes wrong — a no-show, an unsafe behaviour, a near-miss, a community-rules issue — use the in-app report tool. From the ride detail or from Drive → Support → Report an incident:

1. Pick a category: bug, safety, or other.
2. Describe what happened in your own words — no checklist, just the facts.
3. Optionally attach a photo.
4. Submit.

Reports go to your community admin, are recorded to the audit log, and (when serious) escalate to the platform team. You'll hear back from the admin within their stated SLA — typically same day.

• My application is stuck on Pending. Admins review manually — give it a day. If it's been longer, message your admin from the community page.
• Location not updating during a ride. Check that you granted "Always allow" for location, and that the app isn't in battery-saver mode. The map resumes the instant signal returns.
• Document photo rejected. Re-take in good light, with all four corners visible, no flash glare. Re-upload from the document step.
• Parent didn't show up for pickup. Tap No-show after a reasonable wait (HALO suggests 5 minutes). The ride is cancelled cleanly and the parent / admin notified.
• Insurance just renewed — do I need to re-upload? Yes, please. Go to Drive → Documents and re-upload. Your admin re-verifies. Auto-reminders go out 30 days before expiry.

Need a break? You don't have to leave HALO — you can pause driver mode while keeping your account.

• Pause from Drive → Status → Pause driving. New requests stop arriving; existing bookings stay on your schedule until you fulfil or cancel them.
• Step back from a community via Settings → Communities → Leave. Your driver verification in that community is archived (re-applying later doesn't mean starting from scratch).
• Delete the account entirely from Settings → Privacy → Delete my account. Your profile, photos, and documents are removed; completed-ride records are anonymised.