Parking Thank You Note from American Broadcast Journalist, Chris Wallace, 1996
This note and photos preserved in The Parking Museum were from April of 1996 when Mike Wallace and the Prime Time Live team produced a segment on Handicap Placard Abuse. While we couldn’t find the original new story regarding handicap placard abuse here is an article written by The Parking Podcast host and published in the National Parking Association (NPA) magazine about Handicap Parking Abuse.
Solving Handicap Parking Abuse
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that roughly 20% of adults in the United States have a disability.[1] Not all those with a disability drive a vehicle, but this number helps gives us an idea of how many handicap placards are in existence. To give an example on a municipal level, in 2011 the City of Los Angeles sent out 2.1 million handicap placards.[2] The problem with this is that many states offer free parking to those with handicap placards. And just like all benefits, some selfish people find a way to ruin it for everyone. By offering free parking and rarely going after such abusers, many cities make it easy for people to cheat the system – handicap parking abuse. And these abusers who park in parking spaces with expired, stolen, borrowed and forged handicap placards are stealing from cities and making life harder for drivers with disabilities. And this happens in every city, every single day. How do we fix this growing handicap parking abuse problem that is rampant in every city and even glorified in the realms of pop culture?
The most effective method for stopping handicap parking abuse – take away the number one incentive for handicap placard abuse: Free Parking. Currently, around twenty-five states offer free parking for handicap placard plates. John Van Horn, editor of Parking Today, has long argued that, “Handicap parking should be convenient, not free.” Free parking for handicap placards does not make it convenient for the disabled, as many times the convenient spots are all taken by abusers. Van Horn recommends three ways for cities to provide disabled with better access and more convenient parking without making the parking free. First of all, cities should be embracing technologies such as pay-by-phone or in-vehicle meters so the disabled can more conveniently pay. Secondly, cities could offer programs that require disabled to pay, but allow them to park as long as they like or longer than the posted time limit. Many times it does take a disabled person longer to run an errand then it would take a non-disabled person; therefore a disabled person should not be penalized for taking an hour and half when parked in a one hour space – as long as they pay to do so. Thirdly and most effectively, states should adopt the two-tiered handicap placard program as used in Michigan and recently enacted in Illinois. In January of 2014, a new state law allowed only those handicap individuals with “meter-exempt permanent placards” to be allowed to park for free. The requirements for these meter-exempt permanent placards in Illinois are for drivers whose doctors attest they cannot for instance feed parking pastations or meters “due to lack of fine motor control of both hands.”
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/documents/Disability%20tip%20sheet%20_PHPa_1.pdf
[2] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/29/local/la-me-lopez-disabled-20120129
Parking Enforcement Officer Ralph
New innovative technologies are helping to battle handicap parking abuse. In May of 2015, a Russian nonprofit Dislife, teamed up with a marketing agency to provide a powerful shaming techniques for fighting handicap parking. The company installed cameras to determine if a handicap placard was present when a vehicle pulled into a handicap parking space. If no placard was detected, a hologram image of person in a wheelchair appeared in the handicap space who would begin talking to the driver. “I’m not just a sign on the ground. Don’t pretend that I don’t exist. Yes, I’m real,” the hologram would say. In September of 2013, the New York Times reported an app from Parking Mobility that allows smart phone users to report handicap parking abuse. When you see a car illegally parking in a handicap parking space, you can snap some photos which upload to Parking Mobility’s database. Parking Mobility will then submit your photos and the location of the abuser to the proper authorities. And the best part is that if the violator is fined, then Parking Mobility will put up to 20 percent of the fine into your favorite charity.
I remember early in my career, I took over a parking enforcement operation that was practically nonexistent prior to our arrival. After a thorough marketing plan of informing the citizens of our plan to increase enforcement for parking violators, we began issuing parking citations. Sometime during the first week, we issued five or six parking tickets to vehicles parked in front of a pizza parlor. Those vehicles belonged to pizza delivery drivers for the pizza parlor who argued with us every time we made our way in front of their restaurant. After a week of battling their illegal parking habits, one morning we noticed that every single one of the delivery drivers had a handicap parking placard. They smiled from their store-front window as we decided not to ticket their vehicles since they “had” handicap placards. We knew they were abusers and notified the police and listed their vehicle information on the state website section dedicated to handicap parking abuse, but it still took some time until we were able to get all parties on board to put an end to the abuse. Hopefully this article will help you in thinking of solutions to help put an end to the “jerkiest crime imaginable”.
Assistant to the Director of Municipal Courts. Name Unknown.
Sponsor: This artifact made possible due to the generous donation of Maria Irshad, CAPP.