[Tagbert]

Who is the repeat offender in this situation?

The scooter company who provides the scooters? The scooter renter who drops the scooter in semi-random locations? The city who built the sidewalks?

It seems like you are targeting the scooter company when it may be the users who are being careless. I’ve seen a lot of scooters left in the way when a reasonably clear area was just a few feet away.

[freeopinion]

In the first scenario, the repeat offender is clearly the tagger.

But to address your valid question, the scheme shifts the costs to the scooter provider who would likely then impose costs on the scooter polluter. Although they may instead choose to impose costs on all their customers to subsidize the offender.

But it is a very clumsy scheme with many flaws, so probably not a great model upon which to iterate.