My aunt once had her window broken so someone could steal the placard. She has a placard so she can use it in her car, her husband’s car, her daughter’s car, my car, etc.
That hasn’t stopped her from properly displaying it, though. I mean, someone stole one, once, in the thirty years or whatever that she has had it. Maybe longer. Almost since they’ve existed.
Wow. They really wanted that placard. 
I doubt that such a crime is a common occurrence though (IMO).
ETA: I see you already acknowledged the same thing…
It just occurred to me that it might be broken, and that’s why they don’t hang it. My aunt and uncle had a hang tag for parking at the university, and it would break a lot, so they’d stick it on the dash, where once in a while it would get overlooked, and they’d get ticketed (successfully fought, but it’s a pain). They’d fix it with electrical tape, and it’d kinda work. It got replaced every year, so no biggie. More annoying if it’s supposed to last years, like the placards. Are they expensive to replace? My aunt didn’t have to pay for the stolen one because she had a police report.
BTW, I’ll bet the license plates are stolen way more often.
You’re right, it would be easier to take a screwdriver and remove a license plate than it would to smash the window and grab a placard. I wasn’t thinking clearly when I said basically the opposite. :o
I have a temporary placard and the instructions on it do state to remove it while driving. Occasionally I come back to my car and realize I forgot to hang it from the mirror. My fault entirely. I haven’t been ticketed so far, possibly because the placard is visible on my passenger’s seat if not hanging on my mirror.
I do notice that some newer rear view mirrors seem to have a larger diameter for the point of attachment to the windscreen. For people with these cars I could imagine they might need to display it on the dashboard and put it in a glove box while driving so it doesn’t get knocked around by wind or drop into the floor where it is difficult to reach. But no idea why they might not place it on the dash to display it if you point out to them that they forgot.
In AR, we take down the placard while actually driving. Or we are supposed to.
Low revenue ticket, so the police don’t bother much as there are way better things to ticket for.
It is a significant problem in some cities, particularly those with a lot of on street parking that is controlled by parking meters. Some, though by no means all, cities allow free on street parking in metered spots for vehicles with handicapped plates or placards.
Well, yeah… but for near 30 years my spouse managed to remember to put one up/take one down as required.
For many years my spouse refused to get a plate, preferring a placard, because if he went to a rough neighborhood he was concerned that having a handicapped plate or placard would make him a target. He want the option to conceal the vehicle was driven by a handicapped person. But when he did that he did NOT park in the handicapped spot.
(One thug did target him… and discovered that “handicapped” did not equal “helpless”. The would-be mugger left a trail of blood from our car to his getaway car, and we had to clean a sizable amount of his blood off both the inside and outside of the driver’s side door. My spouse couldn’t chase after you, but you did NOT want to get within arm’s reach of him when he was pissed off/defending himself or a loved one.)
Personally, I think it’s either “people are idiots” or “not actually their placard”.
In California, at least, it’s illegal to drive while anything is hanging from your rear view mirror - fuzzy dice, air fresheners, and, I presume, handicapped tags.
IMO this.
But if they hang it on the mirror while you’re there, they’ve done two things:
A) Admitted they were wrong and you were right, and
B) Created a requirement to put it back in the glove box later.
By putting it back in the glove box right now they
A) Say “screw you” in deed to cap off the words they’ve already used.
B) Don’t have to mess with it later.
It’s pretty clear that when dealing with
the second set of options will be far more attractive to them.
plus there are a hell of a lot of people out there who apparently never outgrew the “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO” phase of their adolescence and reflexively refuse to do anything anyone else might tell them.
Sounds like a lot of different reasons that don’t add up to a lot of sense. Didn’t see it mentioned but some people may be embarrassed to display the card, that is until they want the prime parking spot. I understand the OP’s frustration with this, a lot of people use the cards just to get the spot, the card may be for a spouse, parent, etc. but they’ll take advantage of it when they feel like it. My dad used to insist on me and my brothers using a handicapped spot when we ran into the store to get something for him but we didn’t listen to him any more than usual. And it drives me crazy to see able people take the spots. Mostly it’s just dumbassery, usually from teens and the usual “I’ll do whatever the fuck I can get away with” type but I’ve heard people act as if it’s some unfair privilege provided to people because “how dare anybody get anything I don’t get”. Once in a while there’s a really good government regulation that makes this country a better place and yet there are still people who just don’t have a clue.
In more than ten years I’ve not only never been pulled over for that, I’ve been pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt with no notice taken of the dangling placard. Which is good, because if I kept taking it down, I know I’d forget to put it back up and get ticketed for that.
Ambivalid, I know this is a passionate topic for you. But unless you have the ability to issue tickets and citations to people that violate these laws, you are going to be continued to be viewed in the same way as junior-modding is around here. Just some asshole barking up the wrong tree without any real bite.
I did that once. Friend of mine discovered one of her insulin bottles cracked, and didn’t have another one of that type. She asked me to run to the pharmacy to get her another, and use her van with the HC plates so I could park and get in and out more quickly (it was Christmas shopping season, so parking was at a premium). I wasn’t going to do it, but when I got to the store, there were two HC spaces opened right in front, and not another open space in sight. If I went trawling for a space, and then walked to the pharmacy and back to the van, it really literally could have added 1/2 an hour to my trip, and she was at home waiting for her insulin. Alone.
So I parked in the HC space.
I felt weird the whole time, and hurried as fast as I could.
You need to be careful about your assumptions, though. I broke my pelvis in March, and although I’m now out of a wheelchair and I can now walk with pretty much a normal gait, I’m under instructions to keep walking to a minimum for another 3 months. A few yards don’t matter, so if there’s a regular spot reasonably close to the store I’ll take it and leave the closer spots for somebody who might need them more. But sometimes, if the lot is jammed, you’re going to see an apparently healthy and able-bodied middle-aged person park in a disabled spot and walk normally into the store.
And, yes, I occasionally forget to hang the placard on the rearview mirror, because I’m not accustomed to doing it. If a stranger came up to me and asked what I was doing – well, it would depend on their demeanor. If they were polite, I’d respond in kind and be grateful for the reminder, since it might save me having to challenge a $300 ticket; if they started lecturing me right off the bat, I’d tell them to fuck off and mind their own business.
Actually, a lot of people take it on themselves to police this. I used to go shopping a lot with a friend who uses a wheelchair, and sometimes I would drop her off one one end of a mall or complex, and then go to the other end and park her van. I would see a lot of people watch me get out of the van and check the back to make sure it really had a tag. Once I got challenged, and I explained.
I’ve also dropped my aunt off at appointments when we were running late, and using her car, then parked in an HC space, because even if she can’t walk far at once, she likes to walk as much as she can, so she’ll walk back to the car. People have questioned me.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I don’t even necessarily think its a bad thing if someone suspicious reported me to the office of whatever business I parked at. If someone got caught abusing a tag often enough, maybe they’d stop.
Thanks for the helpful opinion.
I have no idea why people do this but I have a habit of reading my local police dispatch report each morning and after reading your thread last night, sure enough, here it is from yesterday:
PARKING COMPLAINT OF A RED PICKUP PARKED IN THE HANDICAPPED SPACE WITH NO PLACARD. SUBJ CONTACTED, HAD PLACARD JUST NOT DISPLAYED.
Be very, very careful about making assumptions. My dad can walk just fine, but he can’t walk very far: Parkinson disease has reduced him to a very limited energy budget. To an outside observer it looks like he’s able-bodied, but they may not see that as soon as he gets in the store or doctor’s office, he’s looking for a place to sit down (or a courtesy scooter to borrow). If he can’t park near the door, life gets a lot more difficult for him.
My sister has MS and is similarly prone to fatigue - but she has avoided getting a mirror hang tag for her car because she doesn’t want to be the target of angry stares and uninformed judgment (silent or vociferous) from people like you.