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Comment by icebraining | Hacker News Reader

it's virtually impossible for the police to tell who parked the bike

In theory, it should be easy: Gobee has that info. Has the police asked?

There are a lot of problems with fining someone after the fact. You have no proof that the last renter actually left the bicycle exactly like that (they may have left it neatly parked just a few metres away and someone purposely moved it), and the renter is quite likely to be a foreign tourist (fining them is near impossible without the benefit of a license plate like you have with a car).

You have no proof that the last renter actually left the bicycle exactly like that (they may have left it neatly parked just a few metres away and someone purposely moved it)

How so? Gobee can just check where it was the moment the renter locked it.

the renter is quite likely to be a foreign tourist (fining them is near impossible without the benefit of a license plate like you have with a car).

Gobee uses digital payment systems, which are not anonymous.

Gobee knows who paid, but that doesn't mean the municipal police can fine that person using the same payment method. Getting fines paid by foreigners is a hard problem to solve, because ignoring these fines even if your address is known just works for most people.

the GPS on these is insanely inaccurate on all the systems we have locally. It barely waits to get a lock to save power, and is often off by half a block or more. It's never fine grained enough to tell which area of the sidewalk it was on

(I've talked to the people who move the bikes about this as well, since they have a hell of a time finding them sometimes)

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