Best way to deal with people who illegally park in disabled spaces?

Most shopping centre's at peak time have no spare accessible / wheelchair spots.

what are utterly pointless are those parent and child parking spaces… installed just to please the, ohh look ‘I have kids’ brigade.

id rather see extra spaces available for those who need them as opposed to those who can’t be arsed or find it’s a bit of an inconvenience with kids. No way of dealing, shops have no authority and Gardai have bigger fish to fry…. Although a blitz once or twice a year might not hurt…get it in public domain.

Parent and child spaces make sense as they are wide enough to open the door wide enought to remove the child without bashing the neighbouring car. Being near the entrance makes it safer than having children walking behind parked cars.

Yeah that's a pretty good way to get yourself hurt, those people have no shame and they won't just stand there letting you make "a show" of them.

99% of people who abuse parking bays will be mortified if called out. You just need to be sure that you can handle the other 1%.

Find them and disable them, problem solved.

Yes, because people have kids just to show off the fact that they have kids. 🙄

If you've ever had to wrestle two small kids out of a car, sticking one in a trolley seat and pleading with the other one not to walk out on front of oncoming cars, you'd appreciate the space being a bit wider and being a bit closer to the store. And no I couldn't have left them at home, or left them alone in the car.

I posted on this point MANY years ago - while it's not illegal to wrongly park in these bays, they are the rule of the shop. Much like the "10 items or less" aisle is a rule of the shop. Would someone rock up to that aisle with a full trolley and demand to be served? If they did they'd be asked to move to another aisle. The shop enforces the rules.

It should be the same for the carpark - during Christmastime they usually have attendants in the car park to ease congestion, so perhaps that's a solution, have a staff member fulltime monitoring who parks where.

I don't think Gardai or traffic wardens can do much in supermarkets carparks when it comes to parking.

If they could you'd occasionally get one popping into a supermarket carpark to fill an afternoon.

5% of spaces must be accessible spaces in any new developments since 2010. So in many of the large places, such as Tesco in Wexford Town, hundreds of spaces means way too many accessible parking spots.

Do you think they’ll still be laughing if they get called out every time, maybe twice on each trip? It is anti social behaviour, make it socially unacceptable.

I know people who park in these spaces illegally and also uses there relatives badges. They've being called out on it and they just call the person who did it an oddball.

Its not illegal to park in a marked disabled / children space in a private carpark, like a supermarket.

But you could put a big yellow sticker across the windscreen asking them to refrain from parking there unless showing the disabled badges or baby car seats in their vehicles.

Sometimes a disability is not visable and may not qualify for a badge but they would benefit from being closer to a shop, like MS etc. Lets not judge but I like the sticker - if you have to spend 5 mins getting it off before you can leave, you won't be in a hurry to do it again.

In relation to kids space, what did anyone over 50 do when they were driving their small ones to a shop? Sometimes its easier to park away from the crush to get more space for your kids and trolley - stop being so prescious, lots of us had children without having to have a designated parking spot.

leave a traffic cone on the roof or bonnet

*just make sure you cover your face whilst doing it - cctv and all that

The “what did anyone over 50 do” isn’t a great argument. People over 50 grew up without smartphones but I bet you don’t avoid smartphones on that basis.

Keeping the journey for those herding a few kids across the car park as short as possible is sensible for everyone.

If you cannot remove a child from a car without dinging the neighbouring vehicles… just have the child in a pushchair or stroller if it cannot be relied upon not to walk under a car….

too many times I’ve seen and the case of one supermarket by the coast in Dublin that I go to… looking at the overhead on google maps there looks like there are the same number of parent and child spots as accessible spots… 8 each…. Lots of spaces where the IGK brigade can unload their children and if in the mood, suitably oversee their transit safely from the car to the shop which will never be more then a few meters….always free parking

Is it a black Audi ?