But what if it was Hitler who was on fire?
And he was handicapped?
Regards,
Shodan
Well, yes, I believe that’s true - it is highly regionally variable. I am in one of those regions where I don’t think that I have ever seen an establishment where ALL of the handicap available spaces were taken simultaneously. In fact most of the time, none of them are taken. Nevertheless, from what I understand from the pure and righteous on this thread, this does not really matter. No matter what the circumstances, if you park in a handicap parking place and you are not actually handicapped, you are ipso facto - an asshole and morally bankrupt. That’s just my understanding from reading this thread.
Yes, there is such a thing as ‘justifiable homicide’. However, that degree of understanding does not under any circumstances, carry over to parking, however briefly, in a handicap parking space.
Amiright?
I’m only ever aware of “justifiable homicide” in cases where it’s a life or death situation. So if you’re in a life-or-death situation, feel free to park in a handicapped spot. Otherwise, why be a jerk?
Since you aren’t killing anyone, I would set the bar a little lower for justifiable illegal parking. YMMV, if you’re an idiot.
You know, you deal with your daughter’s disability without relying upon the handicapped spots. One day when she’s on her own and is denied a parking place because some jackass has decided his need to deliver an icee or unload his amplifier trumps her inability to walk, she can decide for herself how to respond to that, just as those of us who are already dealing with this regularly can decide how to respond to it without your input, thank you very much.
It gets incredibly tiring to be the constant recipient of aggressions like these and have people who aren’t affected say “you’re too angry.” Get bent. I’m entitled to my anger.
I think you honestly believe that this happens infrequently, that people are kind, thoughtful and cognizant that if they don’t have a hangtag/plate/obviously disabled person with them, they don’t park in reserved spaces. That? Is nonsense.
There’s a shopping center local to me, a long strip with a Target, a supermarket, a Best Buy, a Lowe’s, that sort of thing. I’m there every 10 days or so, and every single trip I see at least one non-entitled driver parked in a reserved spot, especially outside the supermarket. Right now, I have photos of 27 different cars on my phone from April 3 to last Saturday, all illegally parked in reserved spaces. I was going to start either a blog or a Flickr group but was dissuaded because I made sure license plates were fully visible in each shot (to prove that they had no plate or permit) and a lawyer friend said there could be liabilities involved.
The hell it does. Maybe in some office buildings where there don’t happen to be any disabled employees, but the legal requirement is a ratio of 1:50 spaces, and the ratio scales by lots of 50, so if you have 99 spaces, only 1 has to be reserved, 149 spaces you can still reserve just 2.
At my local Trader Joes that means that there is 1 space, and because their lot is so small, they got a waiver and didn’t have to make it van accessible, so screw all the wheelies, they don’t want you in their hipster grocery anyway, I guess.
There are 4 spaces at my local neighborhood grocery, but only 2 if you’re on wheels or not able to walk up/down an rather steep and ridiculous incline created by pisspoor grading of the lot. I know from experience that the only time you’re guaranteed to find a free space right away is right at opening or close to closing.
The shopping center where my bank is located did something brilliant with their reserved spots. The facility forms a rectangle around the parking lot, with a large supermarket at one of the skinny ends of the rectangle. Every single mandated reserved spot is outside of the supermarket, so if you’re going to any of the other merchants (or the offices, the entries to which are at the centers of the long sides of the rectangle) you’re just completely without an option, including any option to even get out of your vehicle if you’re on wheels.
And people don’t realize these things until they affect them. All they see are the occasionally empty spaces that they wish they could use and decide that there are too many. There’s always “too much” of something that isn’t for you.
Personally, I, too, would have set the bar a bit lower for this offense. Then again, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Pit, it’s that I am a narcissistic entitled bitch. So it’s possible I may not be pure enough to take that kind of a moral stance.
That’s strange, the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines seems to be about 1 for every 25; 99 spaces would require 4 handicapped reserved. Where do you live?
There are instances when I, as a legal handicapped permit holder, would agree that it’s justified to use the reserved spaces without a permit. None of those times involve moving heavy equipment or delivering frozen beverage treats.
Moving heavy medical equipment, yes. Delivering needed medication or food to a sick person, yes. I would even go so far as saying it’d be justified to park there temporarily to deliver a large number of hard to corral children (very young, or perhaps kids with autism, etc.) safely into a building.
But to use a space in order to make your (able bodied) life easier when engaged in optional activities or to engage in frivolity like frozen treats, no, absolutely not. Just no.
I live in Pennsylvania, and was recently researching local laws on this because of the shitty situation at our local Costco. I could be mis-remembering my numbers, but I recall counting off the number of spaces at Trader Joe’s to try to figure out how they were getting away with only 1 space, and they have 54 spaces.
You’re right about ADA guidelines. Here’s the fun part: there’s no enforcement arm for the ADA. And no mandate that local laws and ADA requirements are congruent. In order to force a building owner/business to comply with ADA requirements (especially if they’re already in line w/laxer local laws) the only mechanism available is a lawsuit. Or a threat of a lawsuit that you need to be ready to go forward on when the business owner says (and they almost always say) screw off, I don’t care, it’ll cost too much and crips don’t come here anyway.
So I really can’t be bothered much with the ADA. It’s a toothless husk of a thing that’s great for reference but plays little to no part in day to day issues.
You could argue that, or you could argue that your legs work and you can walk the extra 15 feet.
Raises hand On my bad days, if there isn’t a handicapped space open close to where I want to go, I leave.
It isn’t “cool” but it’s acceptable because you are still with the car and can move should a fire or whatever break out. I imagine you don’t even turn the car off?
Okay, I can see this being an issue for you. Are you going to automatically assume that those other handicap spaces were taken up by ‘able bodied’ people? Do you get out of your car to ascertain that those spots were taken by someone who didn’t ‘deserve’ them? Are you just as angry if all of those spots are taken by people with legitimate handicap stickers/placards?
My point is, just like able bodied people, there are going to be times when you just can’t find a decent damn parking spot! Circumstances where you are either going to have to wait for a spot to open up or give up and try another day. In other words, days where it’s not about your disability, its just about sometimes life just sucks. And if you are disabled and you think that means that life only sucks for you and is always rosy for able-bodied people, then you are just as much an asshole as anybody else.
As an able-bodied person, I have not once in my entire life been unable to find a legal parking spot that fits my vehicle within walking distance of any place I wanted to go.
And that’s great for you! But there are degrees of able-bodiedness just like there are degrees of disability. There are those who would not be able to walk the distance that you do not find to be problematic and yet are not so disabled as to warrant a handicap parking spot.
My point still stands - if all the available handicap spots are taken by other handicapped people, then…what? What?
Then they need to assign more handicap spots.
I have a disability but am not entitled to a handicap placard, at least so far. If I can’t find a spot close enough to the store I will drive to another store, because it is simply too painful for me to walk very far. What I will *not *do is park in a handicap spot. The system only works if we respect it.
Well, then I don’t see why what Eonwe did slips from “acceptable but not cool” to “I hope you die in a fire!!!” (hyperbole, calm down). It’s not like he parked in the handicapped spot and moved to Bolivia. I’m sure he’d have moved his car if someone showed up and needed the spot.
People park in the fire lane at my grocery store all the time. There has never been a fire there as far as I know, so they aren’t doing anything wrong, right? I’m sure that if a firefighter came in and asked them to move they would do it. No harm, no foul.
As has been noted upthread, there are two kinds of folks who park in handicap spots.
You’ve been lucky. It’s not at all uncommon for me to have to circle around a lot for 15 minutes to half an hour waiting for a spot, any spot, to open up.
For someone to ask him for a spot would be a confrontation that handicapped people shouldn’t have to have. As noted above, a fire truck will ask you to move, or move you, or get someone to move you. People move for the police and for fire trucks. People don’t always move when asked nicely, as noted in the first post in this thread.
As I said upthread, it’s been explained to me by firefighters that they are trained to just drive right into unoccupied cars in the fire lane, push them out of the way, and bill the car’s owner for any damages to the fire truck.
I repeat–I think it’d be TOTALLY AWESOME if people with handicapped placards were issued a bulldozer blade or cowcatcher or something for their vehicles, and have the same rights to handicapped spaces as fire trucks have to the fire lane.