Is parking in Wheelchair spots illegal?

Lump Basher

I was wondering - parking in disabled (or mother & baby) spots in Car Parks - is it actually illegal or just against the individual car park's "regulations"?

I will be making a visit to a local car park (where it happens all the time) next week with a camera crew, etc (I work in a Dublin post-production house) to ask offenders why they do it. It really irritates me when I see it happen, so I want to catch people in the act and put them on the spot.

whiskeyman

http://oasis.gov.ie/transport/transport_and_disability/parking_facilities_for_people_with_disabilities.html

All the info you need there.

Karoma

Penalties for misusing disabled parking spaces
Local authorities around the country operate a strong policy of enforcement regarding spaces reserved for people with disabilities. "On the spot" parking fines of 19 euro will be issued to drivers without a valid European Parking Card who park their cars in disabled parking spaces. In areas where clamping is in operation (Dublin, Cork and Galway), cars parked illegally in these spaces will be clamped and the fee for release will be 80 euro.

Private car park operators are responsible for policing the use of designated disabled parking bays in their own car parks and cars parked illegally in these bays may be clamped. Fees for release will vary depending on the operator. Gardai and traffic wardens will not issue tickets for cars illegally parked in disabled parking spaces in a private car park.

Each accessible parking space is designated as reserved by a vertically mounted or suspended sign showing the symbol of accessibility.

The Road Traffic Act 2002 provides for the replacement of the 'on the spot' parking fines with a new fixed charge system. The maximum levels of those fixed-charge fines are very significantly higher than the current 19 euro 'on the spot' fine. Fixed-charge fines for misuing disabled parking spaces are not currently in effect and specific legal regulations are required to bring the new fines into effect. The Department of Transport expect that these regulations will be introduced later in 2005. Until this occurs, the fine for parking without a valid European Parking Card in a disabled space remains at 19 euro.

http://oasis.gov.ie/transport/transport_and_disability/parking_facilities_for_people_with_disabilities.html

only 19Euro? :mad:

Good luck with the project!

Gandhi

Lump Basher wrote:

I was wondering - parking in disabled (or mother & baby) spots in Car Parks - is it actually illegal or just against the individual car park's "regulations"?

I will be making a visit to a local car park (where it happens all the time) next week with a camera crew, etc (I work in a Dublin post-production house) to ask offenders why they do it. It really irritates me when I see it happen, so I want to catch people in the act and put them on the spot.

Good man!!!! Are you going after people without disabled stickers, or people with disabled stickers that don't seem disabled or both?

Either way, good man!!!

Lump Basher wrote:

only 19Euro?

That's for nothing in fairness. Here in Philly it is $200 (I think) and that's if you don't get towed, in which case you'd be looking at a few hundred in towing fees on top of the fine.

Lump Basher

Gandhi wrote:

Good man!!!! Are you going after people without disabled stickers, or people with disabled stickers that don't seem disabled or both?

Either way, good man!!!

Just without stickers - we can't afford to be embarrassed by someone who we approach who turns out to be legit - plus, we'd feel bad too if we hassled the people we are trying to stand up for We'll also have no problem approaching old people who think that they automatically have a right to park there just because they're elderly - if they had a "right" to be there and were genuinely disabled, the gov would issue them a sticker...it's black or white as far as I'm concerned.

Also - mother & baby spots are for mothers with BABIES and buggies/prams - not just for people with kids - a lot of idiots don't realise that. They extra space is there for getting the baby out of the car seat, and unloading your buggy, etc - to make it easier.

The thing that will be cool, is the fact that people will react different around a camera, and will hopefully try to logically justify doing it, as oppossed to the usual ignorant fob-offs.

Should be fun - I'll post a few clips next week.

elexes

gwan you good thing i hope you make them think about what they are doing and im sure you will get some good answers

Savman

Lump Basher wrote:

I was wondering - parking in disabled (or mother & baby) spots in Car Parks - is it actually illegal or just against the individual car park's "regulations"?

I will be making a visit to a local car park (where it happens all the time) next week with a camera crew, etc (I work in a Dublin post-production house) to ask offenders why they do it. It really irritates me when I see it happen, so I want to catch people in the act and put them on the spot.

Why would you bother? Do you think you'll stop anyone from doing it? Good luck to ye.

Incidentally, why would you be chasing people who park in "Mother & Baby" spaces? And what about those spots, say, in a 24hr Tesco Car park at 2am, how many mothers would be shopping then with their babies?

:rolleyes:

MercMad

Can Daddies with babies park in those "Mom & Babies" spaces too ?

Actually my mother used to drive my cousin about, he is disabled, and they had a specially adapted vehicle with the correct sticker etc. Anyway she approached a space at Northside shopping centre only to be pipped at the post by a woman in a Micra who jumped out and ran off, all under the watchful eye of the security guard. To be fair she parked and exited before he could raw breath !

Anyway my mother approached him and asked what their policy was and he stated that nobody without a sticker could park there and that potentially they could clamp it, but he reckoned by the time the clamp vehicle got their the woman would be gone and they would end up paying the call out charge or something !

Anyway my mother suggested that she would park right behind the Micra and block it in, the guard grinned and said "great idea..........take as long as you need..........I'll explain it to here "

So 2 1/2 hours later my mother came back and duly took hger time loading the car.............the Micra driver was furious.............and vented her anger with a series of verbal insults that'd make Colin Farrell proud. My mothers response was to unload my cousin and go shopping again................!!

When she eventually returned the woman was speechless, and drove off without a single uterance !!!

Now thats a lesson !

Santa Claus

Lump Basher wrote:

Also - mother & baby spots are for mothers with BABIES and buggies/prams - not just for people with kids - a lot of idiots don't realise that. They extra space is there for getting the baby out of the car seat, and unloading your buggy, etc - to make it easier.

Mother and Baby spaces in car parks have no legal definition like disabled parking spaces have.
They were just something cool thought up by a marketing person to attract more mothers with small children to a particular supermarket, and then they all started advertising them.
If you read the sign (in Tesco anyway) they "ask" you to leave this space free to be used by Mothers with small children. No mention of it being reserved...rather just asking you to refrain from parking there, so I'd be careful about confronting people about parking in those spaces as technically there's nothing to stop people parking there !

Savman

Mercmad I fully understand that scenario, you just don't park in a Disabled Spot, I've done it in the past and made a rule to myself not to do it again.

But heading out with a camera in hand is pointless, in fact TV3 did it last week in town and most people just said "yeah i know i shouldnt but i was only here for a few minutes" and most just slammed the door and drove off.

Like I said, why bother

Raytown Rocks

Mercmad

You beat me to the Dads and Babies question.
I too was interested in that one.
I presume its ok for anyone with young kids and prams etc to use them.

Chef

JimmySmith

Gandhi wrote:

Good man!!!! Are you going after people without disabled stickers, or people with disabled stickers that don't seem disabled or both?

A friend of mine goes to collect his brother from work. He's often got bollicked for parking in the disabled space even thou he has his brothers sticker.
He may not have a blind man with him getting out of the car but he does when he gets back into the car.

You cant assume an able bodied person with a sticker is doing something wrong.

Also i have a friend who has a condition that means he cant walk far without resting. He looks perfectly fine getting out of the car, 25 steps later and he's nearly collapsing

Lump Basher

Cool - then I wont bother with the Mother & Baby spots - just people without stickers.

murphaph

Savman wrote:

Why would you bother?

Maybe he has a sense of social justice, or he's just a good person sick of a$$holes abusing disabled people who already have a raw deal in life.

Savman wrote:

Incidentally, why would you be chasing people who park in "Mother & Baby" spaces? And what about those spots, say, in a 24hr Tesco Car park at 2am, how many mothers would be shopping then with their babies?

.....and the flip side to that is how many other empty regular car parking spaces are there likely to be at 2am? Enough say to not warrant parking in spaces reserved for others? Personally I'm glad I'm able bodied and haven't got kids hanging out of me and so on so I don't mind walking an extra 60 seconds to my car.

Hagar

€19 fine is a joke. It's €135 in France and rigourously enforced, as it should be.

De Hipster

We've even got 'expectant mother' spaces...park there & get the local tongues wagging!

Savman

murphaph wrote:

Maybe he has a sense of social justice, or he's just a good person sick of a$$holes abusing disabled people who already have a raw deal in life.

And maybe we all have a sense of this thing you call "social justice" :rolleyes:

But that attitude encourages "social confrontation" which results mostly in "social arguments" and in some cases "social punch-up" so unless this guy is a Traffic Warden this camera idea is an exercise in futility.

If he wants to waste his time you wont see me trying to stop him, but like I said, TV3 News did a bit on this recently and it lasted no more than 20 seconds so I can't see any meaningful outcome other than proving that "some people are inconsiderate".

Nothing new there, then :rolleyes:

jayok

Hagar wrote:

€19 fine is a joke. It's €135 in France and rigourously enforced, as it should be.

I also noticed when I was in France that they put up clever signs in disabled spaces saying (in French obviously) "You can have my space if you take my handicap"

- Just thought it was very clever

Lump Basher

Savman wrote:

And maybe we all have a sense of this thing you call "social justice" :rolleyes:

But that attitude encourages "social confrontation" which results mostly in "social arguments" and in some cases "social punch-up" so unless this guy is a Traffic Warden this camera idea is an exercise in futility.

If he wants to waste his time you wont see me trying to stop him, but like I said, TV3 News did a bit on this recently and it lasted no more than 20 seconds so I can't see any meaningful outcome other than proving that "some people are inconsiderate".

Nothing new there, then :rolleyes:

And? I'm doing it because it'll be fun, & because I'm sick of ignorant c*nts being to lazy to walk 100 yards, at the expense of someone who needs the extra 2 foot to get their wheelchair out of their car.
If we all had your attitude, nothing would ever get done or change for the better, because "what's the point", eh? Not that I think I'm a marter or I'll make a difference, but if I can put them on the spot and make them feel awkward about it, then I'll get some sense of justice.

Gandhi

JimmySmith wrote:

A friend of mine goes to collect his brother from work. He's often got bollicked for parking in the disabled space even thou he has his brothers sticker.
He may not have a blind man with him getting out of the car but he does when he gets back into the car.

You cant assume an able bodied person with a sticker is doing something wrong.

Also i have a friend who has a condition that means he cant walk far without resting. He looks perfectly fine getting out of the car, 25 steps later and he's nearly collapsing

Sorry man, didn't mean to cause offence with that. Where I live there is a huge problem with people getting disabled stickers for temporary conditions (e.g. being on crutches for a few weeks) and then never giving them back. That is why I asked.

MrPudding

Lump Basher wrote:

I will be making a visit to a local car park (where it happens all the time) next week with a camera crew, etc (I work in a Dublin post-production house) to ask offenders why they do it. It really irritates me when I see it happen, so I want to catch people in the act and put them on the spot.

Please do me a favor. Go up to at least one of them and ask them "you do realise these spaces are for physically handicapped don't you?" I use that line myself, I think it would make great TV.

MrP

JimmySmith

Gandhi wrote:

Sorry man, didn't mean to cause offence with that. Where I live there is a huge problem with people getting disabled stickers for temporary conditions (e.g. being on crutches for a few weeks) and then never giving them back. That is why I asked.

I understand where you're coming from, but he might get egg on his face if he accosts people with stickers who seem able bodied

Stick to the pricks without stickers i say

Our man in Havana

Lump Basher wrote:

I was wondering - parking in disabled (or mother & baby) spots in Car Parks - is it actually illegal or just against the individual car park's "regulations"?

I will be making a visit to a local car park (where it happens all the time) next week with a camera crew, etc (I work in a Dublin post-production house) to ask offenders why they do it. It really irritates me when I see it happen, so I want to catch people in the act and put them on the spot.

Private car park (where the law don't apply) or Public council run car park?

You could expose yourself to legal action if you don't go about this in a proper and fair manner. Slander and defamation come to mind. Also tresspass with private car parks.

Imposter

MrPudding wrote:

Please do me a favor. Go up to at least one of them and ask them "you do realise these spaces are for physically handicapped, not mentally handicapped, don't you?" I use that line myself, I think it would make great TV.

MrP

fyp.

Lump Basher

JimmySmith wrote:

I understand where you're coming from, but he might get egg on his face if he accosts people with stickers who seem able bodied

Stick to the pricks without stickers i say

I already said I'll only approach people WITHOUT stickers.

MrPudding

Imposter wrote:

fyp.

I kind of like the look of confusion followed a short time later by the red face as they work out what I mean by themselves.:D

MrP

ballooba

The people who wrongly source the stickers for every day use are worse than people who use them on a once off basis. I don't think that's very fair.

P.s. Tv Three News did this already about 3 weeks ago.

Merl1n

Christmas is the worse time for this to happen.
Id love to smash up the cars belong to people that park in the disabled spots and then slap them in jail for a week, that would teach them and after one or two weeks of that people would learn

ambro25

Re. Dads & Babies, had a funny one in Liffey last weekend...

Me (male, early thirties) comes in my Impreza (I see grins on readers' faces already ), turns into Mams&Babs spot near Cinema entrance to Liffey (on a Saturday PM - lucky or what!). I had 2 cars behind me, a Yaris and a 5-series.

I stop, exit car, not had chance to make two steps to go around the back of the car to open boot & get pram out, when Yaris Mam (who had stopped & waited behind me) winds passenger window down and starts giving me aggro.

And I mean, aggro - not the "you do realise that these parking spaces are for families with infants, don't you?" friendly kind of thing - but "what do you think you're playing at, I've got two kids (me looks quickly, 5 or-so and a 8 or-so year olds) and where am I supposed to park now, shift you boy racer yoke or I'll call security!", several decibels higher than necessary.

Obviously she didn't spot the baby car seat... well...

Me calmly turns back on her, and open instead rear door to slowly and gently extricate my 17 months old daughter from her carseat

Hold her in my arms

Make out I'm having a quick 5 seconds debate, alternatively looking at her and at Yaris Mam who buy now is speechless and getting ready to move on, with about as much egg on her face as a fresh cowpat laid after a night out on the town and a good curry...

Then call at Yaris Mam - "Well, we both agree - you're a feckîng idiot!"

Look on her face - priceless, I now wish the OP had been there with his camera crew

Lump Basher

ambro25 wrote:

Re. Dads & Babies, had a funny one in Liffey last weekend...

Me (male, early thirties) comes in my Impreza (I see grins on readers' faces already ), turns into Mams&Babs spot near Cinema entrance to Liffey (on a Saturday PM - lucky or what!). I had 2 cars behind me, a Yaris and a 5-series.

I stop, exit car, not had chance to make two steps to go around the back of the car to open boot & get pram out, when Yaris Mam (who had stopped & waited behind me) winds passenger window down and starts giving me aggro.

And I mean, aggro - not the "you do realise that these parking spaces are for families with infants, don't you?" friendly kind of thing - but "what do you think you're playing at, I've got two kids (me looks quickly, 5 or-so and a 8 or-so year olds) and where am I supposed to park now, shift you boy racer yoke or I'll call security!", several decibels higher than necessary.

Obviously she didn't spot the baby car seat... well...

Me calmly turns back on her, and open instead rear door to slowly and gently extricate my 17 months old daughter from her carseat

Hold her in my arms

Make out I'm having a quick 5 seconds debate, alternatively looking at her and at Yaris Mam who buy now is speechless and getting ready to move on, with about as much egg on her face as a fresh cowpat laid after a night out on the town and a good curry...

Then call at Yaris Mam - "Well, we both agree - you're a feckîng idiot!"

Look on her face - priceless, I now wish the OP had been there with his camera crew

HA - legend.

MercMad

Re. Dads & Babies, had a funny one in Liffey last weekend...

Me (male, early thirties) comes in my Impreza (I see grins on readers' faces already ), turns into Mams&Babs spot near Cinema entrance to Liffey (on a Saturday PM - lucky or what!). I had 2 cars behind me, a Yaris and a 5-series.

I stop, exit car, not had chance to make two steps to go around the back of the car to open boot & get pram out, when Yaris Mam (who had stopped & waited behind me) winds passenger window down and starts giving me aggro.

And I mean, aggro - not the "you do realise that these parking spaces are for families with infants, don't you?" friendly kind of thing - but "what do you think you're playing at, I've got two kids (me looks quickly, 5 or-so and a 8 or-so year olds) and where am I supposed to park now, shift you boy racer yoke or I'll call security!", several decibels higher than necessary.

Obviously she didn't spot the baby car seat... well...

Me calmly turns back on her, and open instead rear door to slowly and gently extricate my 17 months old daughter from her carseat

Hold her in my arms

Make out I'm having a quick 5 seconds debate, alternatively looking at her and at Yaris Mam who buy now is speechless and getting ready to move on, with about as much egg on her face as a fresh cowpat laid after a night out on the town and a good curry...

Then call at Yaris Mam - "Well, we both agree - you're a feckîng idiot!"

Look on her face - priceless, I now wish the OP had been there with his camera crew

Priceless !!

It just highlights the fact that folk in general are less tolerant than they used to be and are much more inclined to abuse you without observing the facts !

That scenario above is pure road rage !!