Shared scooter parking compliance is unenforceable at scale

Cities require shared scooters to be parked upright in designated areas or 'furniture zones,' but there is no technological mechanism to enforce this. The scooter's GPS confirms it's near a valid parking spot, but cannot verify if it's blocking a wheelchair ramp, lying on its side across a sidewalk, or parked in a doorway. So what? Improperly parked scooters block ADA-required accessible paths, creating genuine danger for blind and wheelchair-using pedestrians. So what? Disability advocacy groups file ADA complaints and lawsuits against cities. So what? Cities respond with expensive manual compliance teams or outright bans rather than solving the parking verification problem. So what? The compliance costs ($3-8 per ride for manual checks) make shared scooter economics unviable, contributing to Bird's bankruptcy and Lime's retreat from dozens of markets. This persists because solving parking verification requires computer vision on the scooter itself (camera + edge ML), which adds $40-60 in hardware cost to a $400 scooter, plus massive privacy concerns about a camera-equipped vehicle on public sidewalks.