Many people view the "International Symbol of Access" (that familiar blue and white wheelchair symbol) as discriminatory because its ubiquitous use on disabled toilets, elevators, train carriages and countless other places has created the somewhat false perception that only wheelchair users are really disabled. With the specter of welfare cuts looming ever nearer in Britain and all around the globe, it's more important than ever right now for bloggers such as myself to shout from the rooftops that just because a person isn't visibly disabled doesn't mean he or she is not.
Having said that, there is one place where, in my opinion, "disabled" should predominantly mean "wheelchair user", and that's the disabled parking space.
This isn't the time to yet again condemn the minority of able-bodied motorists who selfishly park in disabled spaces because they can't be bothered to walk the length of a car park. Those people are generally condemned by society already.
In fact, it was just last week, when driving to an outdoor swimming pool north of Brisbane, that I learnt something wonderful but not at all surprising about Queenslanders. It was a hot Saturday afternoon during the school summer holidays and, consequently, a lot of people had had the same idea as me and my friends. When we arrived, the small car park near the pool resembled a motorway during rush hour, with desperate drivers taking all sorts of risks to secure their place in the sun. Vehicles were parked on every available bit of space - on the grass, up the curbs - and yet not one person sneakily took the sole remaining disabled space which I was able to use. Such integrity I am not accustomed to back in England, I regret to say.
Thankfully, I haven't been forced to use a regular parking space on many occasions during my nearly 8 years of being on the road, but those few occasions were extremely awkward nevertheless. On one occasion, a driver parked so close to the driver's side door of my car that I couldn't approach it in my wheelchair. This meant that I had to enter through the passenger door and lift my 14kg wheelchair over my head and place it behind the driver's seat where it belonged. Then there was the time I had to actually get out of my wheelchair, practically crawl along the wet tarmac to my car, and then reverse and hoist the chair in - with a queue of impatient motorists watching and waiting for me to move.
Let me point out an obvious fact about disabled spaces. Observe the fairly typical one below:
This isn't the time to yet again condemn the minority of able-bodied motorists who selfishly park in disabled spaces because they can't be bothered to walk the length of a car park. Those people are generally condemned by society already.
In fact, it was just last week, when driving to an outdoor swimming pool north of Brisbane, that I learnt something wonderful but not at all surprising about Queenslanders. It was a hot Saturday afternoon during the school summer holidays and, consequently, a lot of people had had the same idea as me and my friends. When we arrived, the small car park near the pool resembled a motorway during rush hour, with desperate drivers taking all sorts of risks to secure their place in the sun. Vehicles were parked on every available bit of space - on the grass, up the curbs - and yet not one person sneakily took the sole remaining disabled space which I was able to use. Such integrity I am not accustomed to back in England, I regret to say.
Thankfully, I haven't been forced to use a regular parking space on many occasions during my nearly 8 years of being on the road, but those few occasions were extremely awkward nevertheless. On one occasion, a driver parked so close to the driver's side door of my car that I couldn't approach it in my wheelchair. This meant that I had to enter through the passenger door and lift my 14kg wheelchair over my head and place it behind the driver's seat where it belonged. Then there was the time I had to actually get out of my wheelchair, practically crawl along the wet tarmac to my car, and then reverse and hoist the chair in - with a queue of impatient motorists watching and waiting for me to move.
Let me point out an obvious fact about disabled spaces. Observe the fairly typical one below:
What do you notice about it? How does it compare to a regular parking space? It's much larger, right? It's enclosed in a box section that has, in my opinion, but one purpose: to allow disabled drivers and passengers enough room to fully open their doors and get in and out of their wheelchairs. It's as simple as that.
And yet, in the nine years I've been driving, I can count on just two hands the number of times I've witnessed a wheelchair user getting in or out of a car that was parked in a disabled space. I often see people with a limp, people on crutches, often old people, but hardly ever someone for whom that type of space was actually designed.
But then, I'm biased. It's easy for me to write all this, me being a life-long wheelchair user. Let me, therefore, briefly mention the case of my good friend, Gerry, who had great difficulty renewing his blue badge a few years ago, despite the fact that his mobility is clearly affected by polio. His difficulty convincing the authorities might well have been be due the sort of biased argument I am promoting here in this blog.
Gerry does not have a wheelchair, but often uses a walking stick when out and about. Naturally, I believe Gerry deserves to use a special parking space, just as I do, to make his life easier, and yet I also believe there should be two kinds of disabled space - one for wheelchairs and another for non-wheelchair disabled people - and that Gerry should use the latter. Apparently such schemes exist already, but they are rare. I've certainly never seen one.
Because it's true that no two disabilities are identical. Some need a wheelchair to get around, and some do not; some need braille to operate an elevator and some don't; some need a large disabled parking space that's close to the shop entrance, and some do not. Disagree with me if you wish, but disabled spaces in their current form should only be available to wheelchair users.
