The issue in that case seems to have been that the columnist to whom the placard was assigned wasn’t in the vehicle. And my guess is that the friend (who had her own placard) didn’t take it along because the columnist’s was already in the van, and therefore she didn’t have it to show the officer who wrote the ticket. There seem to have been undercover operations in some parts of California where officers requested ID from people parking in handicapped spaces, and I’m guessing that’s how they got the ticket.
Losing the placard is overkill for a genuine misunderstanding of the rules when driving a friend who had her own disabled placard, though.
And adding vehicles like that sounds like a nightmare. One of the main ways I use my disabled placard (called a Blue Badge) in London is to take taxis. My disability means I can’t drive, which is pretty common, and living in a big city means that most people I know don’t drive, which would be the same in NYC.
I couldn’t find the column - but I doubt they genuinely believed that it was permissible to use a placard if the person it was issued to wasn’t present as long as there was some other person present who legitimately had a placard but didn’t have it with them. (and if the friend had hers with her, they would have used hers, wouldn’t they) They didn’t intentionally misuse a handicapped space, but that’s not quite the same thing.
I don’t think a Blue Badge is quite like a NYC disabled parking placard if you use it with taxis - unless something is very different in London, I wouldn’t think it’s common to have a taxi park and wait for you to return. If you you mean that the Blue Badge is used for free or discounted taxi rides because you can’t use public transit, that’s a separate thing from the parking placard in NYC.
If anyone’s interested, the columnist I mentioned was Susan Parker. She published a book back in 2002, Tumbling After that incorporated the columns she wrote for the Chronicle with some new material. I haven’t read it, so I don’t know if the story about losing the handicapped placard is included.
If they genuinely didn’t think it was permitted, then it’d be a very short column, surely?
It’s a mistake that did not lead to a disabled space being used by someone non-disabled - a reminder would make more sense than removing the disabled person’s placard, unless it happened repeatedly.
The Blue Badge means they can pick you up and set you down in disabled parking spots, and the same goes for certain road markings. Otherwise most of the time they’d have to drop you off quite a long way from the entrance.
It’s not about waiting and doesn’t get you discounted travel (there is a scheme for that but that’s not what I was talking about). Just a different name for a disabled placard.
And of course that doesn’t take into account going to, say, a gig with friends, and only being to go because one of them drives and can park in a disabled space with me. Adding them just would not be practical at all. I have the disability, not the car.
Now that I have the columnist’s name, I may have found the column and I suppose that someone who had to learn that she can’t stand in the disabled line at motor vehicles might have genuinely misunderstood. ( I wouldn’t have had to learn that - why would she think the disabled line was for anyone other than people who are disabled?). She apparently keeps the tag hanging on the mirror at all times, judging by her account of being stopped for outdated stickers. It sounds less like a misunderstanding to me and at best, someone who didn’t bother to read the rules.
But if that is the column referred to , the friend did not have a placard and there is no mention of it being a handicapped space. The columnist parked in a metered space without paying the 25 cent fee and pointed out the disabled placard when she returned to find a meter maid writing a ticket - and got herself a much more expensive ticket and the placard confiscated. Now, I wouldn’t have a problem if the meter maid didn’t write the ticket/confiscate the placard but it’s also not clear from the article how obvious Mia’s disability is. It is clear that the meter maid asked if Mia had a placard and she did not. Possibly things would have gone differently if she did.
Like I said, NYC doesn’t have disabled spots on the street and the placards really aren’t useful in most circumstances. In NYC, the cab could pull over in a “no standing” zone to drop you off or pick you up, but it’s legal for someone without a placard to do that as well.
In my jurisdiction, it isn’t. My late wife had one (blind, no DL or car). My current wife also has one.
That’s probably it. I was describing from memory a column I read more than 20 years ago, so no doubt I got a lot of details wrong.
I live in New Mexico but spent a good deal of time in California with my disabled wife so she could see her relatives. She could not drive but we had a handicap plate on the van and placards for the van and RV. New Mexico does not have handicap plates for RVs but other states do. And yes, there are handicap parking spaces for RVs. But I digress, California does require visitors from out of state to apply for California visitor handicap placards. We never bothered and no one ever asked for one. Only time we used a placard was to get free parking at the beach.
Well, if the police issue a ticket for using a handicapped spot without the handicappee being along for the ride, then presumably they saw the person(s) involved and interacted long enough to verify the identity did not match the placard. (And presumably in San Francisco issuing a ticket by simply guessing the person’s gender by appearance from a distance away is not reliable… 
)
It sounds like the columnist and friend simply relied on “nobody will check”. Someone did.
A system that requires an 85yo to remember their personal password to login and change the list of valid cars (and then change it back to put the neighbour’s car on as one of the 3 cars, when Junior turns in his rental car and flies back home) is probably asking a bit much.
But, it seems NYC has at least put some thought into their handicapped system. I always thought that putting the handicapped symbol on the license plate instead was kind of limiting.
Around here there appears to be a no excuse policy, if a car is in a HCP space there must be a placard appropriately displayed in the car otherwise a ticket is issued. Standing instead of parking won’t fly. There are a growing number of cases of tickets being issued to cars in decertified HCP spaces. So if the cop can see the painted over lines, or the lines after the over paint washes off, they’ll issue a ticket and you can get it dismissed if you go to court with documentation that the space is no longer certified.
In California, you can get a placard along with the plate. You just need to check both boxes when applying.