The other side of that coin is the 300 pound woman that is considered handicapped because she weighs that much.

The doctor should be telling her to park as far from the store and walk her fat ass in.

I never park in handicapped spaces even when driving my mother's car which has the placard for the mirror.
Then when I have her with me, and go to Walmart, I drive around a lot looking for an available handicapped space, and many times don't find one, and end up dropping her off at the door.

Then when we get inside and hopefully find a scooter, I see at least three four hundred pound forty year olds driving around the store, and out to their handicapped parking spots.

So in some cases, I think people probably just get fed up with the real abuses of the whole handicapped parking system.

It probably really hurts small businesses that rely on vehicle traffic if the cities force them to have too many handicapped spaces where parking is in short supply. Having lived in Europe I suspect it would be even worse over there.

The only person I know with a handicapped placard is a weed-growing pill-popping wife-swapping lawyer with an achy back who doesn't want to walk the extra twenty steps to the liquor store.

You can tell he's disabled because he's got a giant home gym and a medical marijuana card.

As he said to me one day as he lit up a joint in front of a bunch of kid-toting families: "Hey, it's medicine".

✔ Isab at November 30, 2013 8:45 AM

There was a factoid about this on this right here very blog a few months ago; In Cali, something like 20% of the cars on the road have disability placards, because doctors face no sanction for issuing bogus ones.

Besides, snot-blowing sarcasm is rarely effective as a policy maneuver.

I look for "Compact" car spaces to park my full-size work van. If people with little cars would only use those spaces, I'd have space to park, too.