Another anecdote.I had to go to traffic court for another reason. One of the cases called before mine was a taxi driver who had dropped off a disabled passenger, and left his cab in the handicapped spot while helping his passenger and her shopping bags into the building. When he got back to his cab, the parking patrol officer was just finishing writing up the ticket. In court, the cabbie was disputing the ticket. The judge listened to these facts, and dismissed the ticket, even though technically this was a violation of the act. One factor that may have been on the judges mind was that the province had just recently increased the set fine amount from $150 to $500.
I have seen some places where they use computerized ticket systems. A car with a set of cameras goes down one of the residential streets with 1-hour or 2-hour parking. It takes pictures of the licenses and wheel positions. once the time limit is over, with a bit of allowance (say 1:15 for 1-hour parking) they return and any car that has not moved, they can print up a ticket and stick it in the nice yellow envelope under the wipers.
AFAIK “I never saw that ticket” is no excuse. It’s in the system, the late penalties accumulate, and eventually you will have to pay to renew your license. If you ignored it, too bad. If it blew away, sux2BU. While your car could be towed or your license suspended, I have never heard of anyone being arrested for parking tickets in Canada? Seems to be another fun American thing.
With computers, most modern systems will allow the police to check on the provenance of handicapped placards just like with license plates. So yes, if they suspect that the “owner” of the placard is not present, they can wait and ticket. Limiting the placard to certain vehicles seems to be an automatic route to discouraging good Samaritans - my choice is to dump granny and her wheelchair at the door to wait for 5 minutes while I park in western Mongolia at the edge of the lot and walk back, or roll granny all the way from the Far East.
Maybe to an extent - there’s no reason in NYC that your car couldn’t be listed on granny’s placard as mine is listed on my mother’s. But since the NYC placard doesn’t merely allow you to park in handicapped spaces but instead exempts the vehicle from certain street parking rules if they weren’t tied to specific vehicles there would be a lot more abuse of them. And the police checking on who the placard was issued to and waiting to see if the owner comes back to the vehicle if they are suspect the person isn’t present* isn’t going to work when someone with a permit might be parked in a “no parking” zone or at an expired meter all day ( or for multiple days).
- What would make them suspect that, anyway?
It’s not an American thing either.
The city of St. Louis will do that, and they list the vehicle on the sign. So a visitor with a placard can be ticketed for using the spot. If you’re from the St. Louis area you know that residential parking is a hard fought thing, particularly in South St. Louis.
A friend worked for the water dept and a survey determined that a fire hydrant needed to be installed adjacent to one of these spots. The spot “owner” lost the spot, so the Alderman had it moved down the street about 30’. This put it in front of a neighbor’s house so they could no longer park in front of their own home. I’m told there were physical altercations involved.
My husband used to give the little old lady down the street a ride to the grocery store. She wasn’t disabled, she just didn’t drive, and that was before rideshare, and taxis were hard to get. He once pulled into a handicapped space to drop her off, intending to move and do some of his own shopping, and then come back to pick her up. He was ticketed while standing (not parking) in a handicapped spot. He looked up the law. It’s not illegal to stand in a handicapped spot. He was unable to even get a hearing with a judge. We ended up paying a $200 ticket.
No, the woman he drove did not offer to pay any of that.
One thing you could do in a pinch is just let your friend out at the door, or even from the handicapped spot if that’s where the ramps/handrails are, and then take your car and park it in a regular spot.
It’s a pain, but it’s the best of both worlds- no ticket, and your friend’s disabilities are accommodated.
That certainly depends on jurisdiction. In SF they ticket for standing in a handicapped spot.
Well, they do in my town, too. But doing that isn’t supported by the text of the law. He looked up both the law and the definition of “parking”.
(And she didn’t have a disabled placard, but she was pretty feeble. She probably could have gotten one if she had a car for it. Dropping her off a block away really wasn’t a viable option. He was pretty pissed about the whole thing.)
What the OP is doing would also be unlawful in my Canadian province. My wife has a disability and a disability parking placard. In addition, she has a parking permit which she buys for a nominal annual fee for parking meter time (max 2hrs per park) which attaches to the placard. We can take the placard with us everywhere we travel and can park in any handicapped parking stall using that placard. (the meter time part of the placard is good in our city only).
I would be stunned (and appalled) if owning a car is one of the requirements for obtaining a placard.
The “standing” is an interesting issue. In the past, I occasionally would “stand” in the fire lane outside the store. I always assumed if an emergency vehicle - or cop - appeared, I would promptly move. I guess there was the possibility an unreasonable cop would want to pump their ticket quota…
Personally, I view standing in a hcp spot similar to using the hcp bathroom stall - no problem if a hipped person is not present desiring to use it. But I’m not enforcement, and many people strongly disagree.
I think it is unquestionably desirable that society reserve parking spaces for “disabled” people. I do not think it unreasonable to expect the person desiring to make use of these spaces to display their tags in the vehicle used. Sorry, but it is not too much of an inconvenience to take it out of your purse. And if you forget it at home, well, maybe you ought to go home and get it.
Yeah - it would be nice if LEOs and courts were reasonable in cases such as a cabbie helping a passenger, but you can’t always rely on that.
Let me rephrase that: If she owned a car she would have been motivated to try to get a handicapped placard, and would likely have succeeded.
Can you quote the rules? Because I looked them up in MA and it appears that standing in a Disabled spot can be supported. I’m not sure if the piece I’m quoting means that towns are permitted to or required to make standing in a spot an offence. But it definitely doesn’t limit the offences to leaving the car unattended.
(24) For prohibiting or regulating the standing or leaving of vehicles unattended within parking spaces designated
as reserved for vehicles owned and operated by disabled veterans or handicapped persons and within certain
other areas.
California is even more explicit:
It is unlawful for any person to park or leave standing any vehicle in a stall or space designated for disabled persons and disabled veterans pursuant to Section 22511.7 or 22511.8 of this code or Section 14679 of the Government Code, unless the vehicle displays either a special identification license plate issued pursuant to Section 5007 or a distinguishing placard issued pursuant to Section 22511.55 or 22511.59.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH§ionNum=22507.8
I think @puzzlegal is referring to her own location and alluding to the fact that just because a ticket is written doesn’t mean that the law was actually violated. I once got a ticket for being in a bus stop which is a “no standing” zone. However, I was found “not guilty” in my hearing ( by mail) because I was dropping off a passenger , which is explicitly allowed by law in “no standing” and “no parking” zones in my city. I am not allowed to drop off/pick up passengers in “no stopping” zones. If you are wondering how they managed to give me a ticket when I was just dropping someone off, the answer is that while the passenger was exiting, the ticket writer blocked me from moving with his vehicle.
Although I am wondering why her husband couldn’t get a hearing - that doesn’t really make any sense to me , that you can’t get a hearing on a parking ticket and just have to pay no matter what.
No parking , no stopping, no standing.
Confusing? I’m not a city girl so I had to look it up in general.
No parking means no parking but you can drop off passengers and load /unload stuff then leave. Not a waiting spot for your passenger to return.
No standing means no parking but you can drop off a passenger but no loading unloading stuff. Not a waiting spot for your passenger.
No stopping means no parking no standing and don’t even think about it, not your space keep rolling by.
And there may be small print on the sign allowing these activities at certain times.
Also watch out for streets that require a permit # to park.
IANAL, YMMV and all that but it sounds like you were “detained.” You might have been able to fight that at the hearing.
I may not have been clear enough - he blocked my vehicle from moving so that he could write the ticket but I have no reason to think he would have prevented me from getting out of the vehicle and walking away because 1) he wasn’t a police officer, but a rather a traffic enforcement agent and 2) if I got out and walked away, I would have been guilty of parking in the bus stop and he probably could have gotten my car towed. (which would have been a much bigger PITA than getting a ticket.
In any event, the police are allowed to detain someone long enough to write a traffic infraction ticket but cannot extend the stop past the time it takes to perform the tasks associated with issuing a ticket and I don’t see any reason it would be different for a parking ticket.
Curious. Never looked it up in my jurisdictions, but I always assumed the difference between parking and standing was whether the driver remained with the vehicle, such that they were able to move it when needed.