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Recently my paraplegic wife and I were sitting in the parking lot of a large shopping mall and thought that we would carry out an informal survey in Denver of the use of parking bays reserved for the disabled. We were so shocked that we separately or jointly repeated our little study at a few other shopping malls and this is what we found over a period of three months: Out of 91 people putting up legitimate disabled parking permits inside their vehicles at three shopping malls, not one person using them used a wheelchair for locomotion or showed any signs of pronounced mobility impairment. The remainder were: 1. Using walking sticks or other walking aids, amputees: 11 2. Obese: 24 3. Looked older than about 60 years: 31 4. Middle aged mothers with several children: 10 5. Teenagers with no obvious disability: 7 6. Miscellaneous others with no obvious disability: 8 This does not include 14 middle aged or young women and one man who did not display any form of disabled authorisation at all, all of whom without exception, when politely asked "what your disability is", replied that they "were only going inside for a few minutes" or became openly even more hostile. In two cases, my wife had to call the local sheriff on her cell phone because of exceptionally threatening behaviour of women without parking permits. We have been most disappointed to note that the illegal use of disabled parking is displayed predominantly by women drivers and have been wondering why this is so. Lest some criticism be levelled at us for judging disability by the mere appearance of someone walking with no obvious difficulty, we do appreciate that some organic disorders do not always manifest themselves in mobility impairment, such as cardiac disease or severe diabetes. However, as a cardiac patient who lost over 60 percent of my left ventricular function, I discovered that I am also eligible for a disabled parking permit. To me, that is outrageous, since the less physical movement I do, the less likely I am to improve my cardiac function. I would be disgusted with myself for even considering the illegal or legal use of disabled parking for myself. Legally, divisions of motor vehicles in different States issue disabled parking permits only to "persons who are certified by an authorized health care specialist as having a permanent or temporary disability that limits or impairs their ability to walk." So, it appears as if we have a situation which: 1. involves the illegal use of disabled parking permits 2. is being abused with the collaboration of many medical professionals 3. our informal survey has misinterpreted Whatever reason is correct, it is apparent that some official survey needs to be regularly carried out by the authorities and security staff at shopping malls, restaurants and other public places. It is bad enough being severely disabled without being deprived of parking by some very selfish and inconsiderate individuals. So, why on earth do the vast majority of people using legitimate disabled parking stickers not appear to be mobility impaired? What qualifies someone for the issue of disability parking? Judging from what we have recorded, it appears as if the majority who obtain these stickers are obese or old. If this is correct and these folk are not simply borrowing disabled authorisation, then something is very wrong with the standards of qualification. Non-pathological obesity and advanced years generally are no reason whatsoever to qualify for disability parking. After all, some regular daily exercise is well known medically to offer health and quality of life benefits to the old aged and obese. It would be most interesting to hear the comments of others about their observations regarding the use and misuse of disabled parking. Why is it that so few folk who qualify for disabled parking permits are wheelchair users? Maybe those who have to use wheelchairs should be issued with a special red disabled parking permit which allows them to use parking closest to the shops. Maybe only the severely disabled should be granted parking permits. What do you think? This situation often causes severe problems for many severely disabled folk like my wife, so it really is unfair for those with relatively little mobility impairment to use disabled parking. As I stated earlier, I could easily obtain medical certification that would grant me a disabled parking permit as someone with profound cardiac damage - to me, it would be inconceivable to do that and deprive someone in real need of that parking. Dr Mel C Siff Denver, USA http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Supertraining/