My state also issues temporary handicapped parking permits. It’s quite common.
As for the guy in the op, i voted “other”. I don’t see how being able to play golf (possibly only on good days) proves he never needs that handicapped spot. But I’d he is actually fully able, and just has the permit leftover from when he was in worse shape, then no, morally he shouldn’t be using it.
There was a blind person at my workplace. A co-worker* drove him to and from his home each day. In order to help the blind worker find his way to a known parking place, the company gave (driving) co-worker a permanent (reserved) handicapped spot. To my knowledge, he never used it unless the blind guy was with him.
*All volunteer, including helping him with errands/groceries on the way home. Very few people on this planet actually deserve a statue in the town square, but I figure he’s one of them.
Well…I think he is more clueless than a jerk.
He goes to scheduled golfing dates, not just when he feels like golfing.
I think this is his situation. He is considered a Disabled Veteran and Florida gave him Disabled Veteran plates which include the handicap designator. And he uses it.
I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t realize that he is doing something that is ethically sketchy. As I said, he’s pretty clueless about stuff.
BTW, he’s a bit more than an acquaintance. I haven’t mentioned any of this to him and have no real intention to do so. This has only been a (sometimes heated) discussion subject between my wife and I.
I would never try to second guess any stranger’s or even casual acquaintance’s handicap status, but I know damn well that he can walk very well and with no difficulty.
He definitely sounds clueless, and it is irritating but apparently he’s disabled according to tptb.
Though to see my loved one with T7 paraplegia require the use of a chair lift and transfer his 6’3 body that is numb from his nipples down in and out of his van is humbling. He’s had to see able bodied people use a placard to nab a handicap spot and hop out of their car with ease and saunter into a venue. While he’s left to circle around looking for another appropriate spot.
It’s galling!
One issue is that so many different organizations define “disability” differently. The term means extremely different things in the context of the ADA, the VA, Social Security, your state’s parking laws, your particular doctor… If this guy was 100% disabled due to PTSD, would he still get the VA disabled plates and still park in the hcp spots - despite having no mobility issues? Would that make him clueless? A jerk? Both? Something else?
Further complicating this is how differently different individuals perceive “disability.” And that perception is often complicated by the interaction of combined physical and mental conditions. There is also the impact of what I consider an individual’s personality/character. Some people can be extremely impaired, yet for various reasons, they may resist ANY accommodations, or only begrudgingly accept the fewest they absolutely need. Other people (including some - certainly not all - vets) aggressively seek out the designation of being disabled, and then flaunt that designation to get every accommodation/benefit they can.
IMO, it is very common in America for individuals (certainly not everyone) to seek whatever preferential treatment they can arguably qualify for. They are certainly free to do so. And the rest of us are free to form opinions about their behavior should we wish to.
I think they should also get rid of most fire trucks. They are very rarely used.
The point I was trying to make is if a few disabled people who can still walk perfectly fine slip through the cracks, I’m okay with it bc we still have enough spaces to accommodate them.
Huh.
I’ve never really given it a second thought, but: years ago, I had a co-worker who was, obviously, short — and she was the first to cheerfully explain that it wasn’t a matter of dwarfism; her go-to phrase, with petite-cheerleader-who-gets-thrown-into-the-air enthusiasm, was “perfectly proportioned”.
Anyhow, she had a permit, and she’d use a handicapped parking space — and when folks would ask her about it, she’d just as cheerfully explain that, yeah, if you’re under a certain height, you can just qualify for one of these; and I figure, being short has sometimes been a drawback, and if it can sometimes be an advantage, I’m not gonna say ‘no’.
And now, for the first time, I’m wondering: if she had something else going on, and wanted to keep it private, then maybe she thought, look, they already know that I’m short, and where I park; do I want to come across as a short person who also has a medical problem, or do I want to come across as a clever opportunist while taking yet another chance to describe myself as perfectly proportioned?
Ah! Then I still disagree. Good reasons for not policing who is and isn’t disabled by those of us who aren’t intimately knowledgeable about a specific situation has been given. There being enough places isn’t a good reason. Plenty of disabled people have stories of the times they’ve had to either struggle their way from a regular spot or just have to give up on whatever errand or event they were going to because all the spots were taken that time. People using the spots when they don’t need to increase the frequency of such events.
She had some disability other than her height and didn’t think it was anyone’s business. Simply being short doesn’t qualify anyone for a handicap permit - think about it . It doesn’t have to be the driver who qualifies for the permit, it can be a passenger. Even a child passenger. If height itself was a reason , every kid would qualify for some period of time even though they are not disabled and have no mobility issues.
I worked at the Honolulu permit office years ago for a few months while I was on light duty. I don’t know what the exact legal requirements* for the permit were, other than bringing in a doctor’s note, and the permit was issued for the time period prescribed. However, the manager, who was there for decades, told us that anyone with cancer of any kind, a heart conditon or AIDS was to be given a permit, no further questions asked. And this was the way it was or decades.
We weren’t to judge if we saw the person walking in without a cane, a limp or any type of assistance as long as they had a doctor’s note. We were allowed to ask if the disability wasn’t visible as described on the doctor’s note. For example, we could ask to see their back brace if that was specified on the note,
*From the Permit Application form:
I think that we’re best served by having an impartial system, including appropriate medical professionals, to determine who gets a handicapped parking tag, and that once that system has granted someone a tag, the rest of us shouldn’t second-guess it. The system will of course be imperfect, as all human systems are, and so there will inevitably end up being some folks who get handicapped tags who don’t actually need them. This is an acceptable price to pay for all of the other cases where the system does work.
Now, if a person doesn’t actually need the tag, and knows that, (and this can sometimes include people who genuinely need it sometimes but genuinely don’t other times) but uses it anyway, that’s unethical, but there’s no way to enforce that beyond the individual’s own conscience. Because if we had any other means of enforcing it, then we would already have applied it at the stage where that person got the tag.
II didn’t see either of them using a handicapped spot.
How do you know they’ve got a placard?
Plus which, need can be intermittent. If they do qualify, maybe they’re only using such a spot when they actually need it, and you didn’t happen to be there at the time.
Exactly. A friend of my sister’s had a medical issue that had her increasingly confined to a wheelchair. On days where she felt well enough to not need one she didn’t and very triumphantly would park her car with its handicap plate in a non-handicap slot because she could.
That strikes me as kinda odd. Instead of being open about a medical condition, she prefers to present herself as what many would consider an asshole?
Nevertheless, she may have been classified as having dwarfism simply by virtue of her height (regardless of her proportionality; 4’10" and under is considered to be dwarfism), and therefore qualified for a permit.
I was under the impression that there are different forms of dwarfism (or similar), and that you can in fact be entirely proportional in some of them.
Yes, but there was a time when a proportional person who is 4"10 would not have been considered a dwarf - they would just be considered short. And there was a time when “dwarf” was used for disproportionate extremely short people and another word was used for normally proportioned extremely short people.
Yes, of course, but rather than nitpick each and every case, it may be simplest and best to just have a blanket “pass” for anyone who falls within the category, instead of analyzing each and every individual case as to whether they have enough disability to qualify for a parking pass.