Handicap Parking
Another problem I often face as a handicapped guy is parking my specially adapted handicap van in parking lots. Sure there are handicap parking spaces allocated to vehicles such as mine with big, prominent handicap parking signs depicting them with the handicapped symbol. But you can bet your last dollar some brain dead moron has gone and parked their SUV in the last handicap parking space and run into the store on his perfectly good legs to go buy up the entire place which will take him hours.
Now, I don’t exaggerate here. Go to any parking lot and check the vehicles parked in the handicap spaces and you’ll find most of them are not driven by handicapped folks. Sure, these people are in the minority as most honest decent folks would never take a disabled parking space and instead go park at the other end of the lot. But the ignorant minority spoils it for everybody and while it’ll get them a fine or even a tow, there never seems to be a cop or a parking attendant around when I’m in my wheelchair van and I need to park near the store in a space that’s wide enough for me to get myself and my wheelchair out of the side door of my van.
What can be done to alleviate this situation?
Ha! Most folks would say to have more cops around checking the spaces, but come on now! Cops have got better things to do than go checking up on who parked in what space, like catching muggers, thieves and crack dealers etc. So you might say have more parking attendants or officials checking spaces. But who’s gonna pay for that? City Hall? Don’t think so!
Nope, its down to ordinary citizens to stand up and be counted, but in our society that’s rarely gonna happen either, cause if you see some scruffy looking guy park an even scruffier looking truck in a handicapped parking space in a lot, are you gonna approach him and tell him to park elsewhere? Not of you wanna risk having your head blown off cause he’s maybe high on something and wouldn’t think twice of pulling his gun on you.
So that leaves us. The folks who actually need the spaces to do what we have to do. Maybe some crack head is gonna shoot a little old lady in a wheelchair for bothering him while he’s conducting a business transaction in the lot with his buddies all taking up the handicap spaces cause they offer more space than regular spaces. But in most cases even bad guys are reluctant to do any harm to a handicapped person in a wheelchair.
They might even say sorry and move their vehicle for you!