When you rent a car, the driver/renter pays all fines during the rent period, except maybe those related to the car itself not being fit for street use.
Why is this different for these scooters?
Unlike cars, it's very easy for vandals to move a scooter without renting it, e.g. by picking it up. I've seen scooters thrown into bodies of water and inside fenced areas. Most jurisdictions require the owners to remove them from such locations in a timely manner.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34848478
I was thinking not so much of the parking fines, but rather of the driving ones that reportedly are "split".
The scooters don't have a registration plate, so the Police (or whomever issues the fine) has to stop the rider (or not?) then:
1) if the rider is stopped and fined, how/why is the fine split with the company?
2) if the rider is not stopped and the fine goes generically to the company, same question, if the rider can be identified in order to split the fine, why can he/she not be made to pay the whole fine?
No idea how it would be achievable it is entirely possible that the user parked the thing correctly but a kid passing by moved it later.
Many years ago in Paris (France) there were normal (actually terribly heavy) bikes for rent that had dedicated stands, you unlocked them with a card or similar, and you had to return them and lock them to another stand, otherwise you kept paying the rent (it was far from perfect, but at least created not this kind of problem).
But I was talking more about the US$ 500 one for driving on the sidewalk:
>And scooting on a San Francisco sidewalk instead of in a bike lane or road can earn a fine of $500, even if there’s no bike lane available. That fine is split between the scooter company and the scooter rider.
That one should be all on the rider, shouldn't it?