If you don’t have a plate or placard you do not belong in a handicapped spot. It does not matter if “you are only going to be a minute” or “there are no other open spots” or “you are just dropping off your kids” you are a stain on the face of the earth, you do not belong there, those spots are for the handicapped not the lazy.
I think they should raise the fine to $2000 and a month in jail.
Down here in SoMD there seems to be an epidemic of people parking in the spots for handicapped people, I guess the people here are just lazy idiots.
Handicapped parking viaiotlons are never acceptable but I’m more intrigued that a public building for 600 employees could be constructed in this day and age with only 104 parking spaces. Especially when many in the building have two cars: their own personal vehicle and the police car assigned to them. I’m also reminded of Tom Paine’s What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. There was a time when the wheelchair symbol was actually permanently embossed onto the license plate of those few deemed deserving of the reserved parking space. Now that we are handing these things out like candy for people with every imaginable malady from panic attacks to sore backs, they have run out of space on the plates and switched to placards. Is it any wonder that the spaces are no longer esteemed the way they once were? Has the Globe ever investigated whether any doctor in this state has ever said no when asked by a patient to sign the form? Now that would be a story. The placard system is rife for abuse, too. Regulators once decided that the photo and name of the handicapped person be printed on the placard for verification purposes, but after a few complaints they began issuing opaque slides to hide the name and picture. Unbelievable! As for you Dan, no disrespect intended to you or Miss Media Nation, but if you had already dropped her off, presumably you could also pick her up at the same spot. So why on earth did you, an able bodied person, need to occupy a handicapped space? Didn’t your need for the space end once your daughter was safely out of the car? Never mind a police officer questioning you, I’d have been more worried about encountering a double amputee who might have needed the space and the accoutrements that often come with it, like more square footage and a ramp to the sidewalk.
Many take the plakard not because they are cheating the system as you suggest but because in many states the plate is considered a “novelty plate” and the state charges $35 a year for a novelty plate while the placard does not have the yearly cost