Garner Miller wrote:
> > FWIW, I think handicapped parking is badly abused. If someone is handicapped
> > and cannot drive, it would be just as easy for the person driving them to drop
> > them off, park the car in a regular parking spot and meet them and it is to
> > park in a special spot and walk.
>
> My mother had a stroke two years ago. Not only is it very slow and
> cumbersome for her to walk (using only the muscles one one side of her
> body, and a cane), but balance is very difficult and there's a real
> possibility she can fall if she walks on anything but the smoothest
> pavement without assistance. Someone has to be by her side when she
> walks outside. She can't be simply dropped off.
>
> If you consider that to be "abuse" of the handicapped spot, I don't
> know of any logical explanation that would convince you otherwise.
>
> Yes, there's abuse out there, but don't think for a minute that because
> the driver isn't handicapped, it's automatically an abuse of the
> parking space.
>
I guess that's my own fault for making it look like a blanket statement about abuse
:-) I realize that there are cases where that is not practical. But I did not that
you agreed that there is abuse. Thank goodness they have stricter standards about
them now than they did a dozen years ago. I knew a guy whose wife had one because, I
was told, she had broken her arm several years before and it was difficult for her
to carry her books to class. Oddly, I had no knowledge of her either breaking her
arm or going to school. It turns out that she had one because she occasionally
drove her father once in a while. He had his own car and drove it himself. The wife
in this case was a vary large and very lazy woman. Parking in the handicapped spot
saved her a lot of walking, though walking probably would have done her some good.
I don't know what his excuse was. I often saw him parking in handicapped spots and
mentioned it to him. He figured it was perfectly acceptable because he had a permit
on the car.
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