Last week I arrived early at church and there were no handicap spaces available to park in. Considering I needed to get my wheelchair out of my van, I couldn't just park in any spot. I ended up spotting a parking space at the end of a row that had an orange cone in the middle of it, so I parked in the space next to it and then used the coned- off space to open my ramp and drive my chair out. When I came back to the van after the service someone had moved the cone and parked in the spot next to me, meaning I had no space to put my ramp down and get my chair back into the car.
This is meant to be a PSA in the kindest possible way, because I know most people do not go out there trying to be a pain. A lot of the time it is just that they simply do not know better yet. And once we know better, we do better, right?
Have you ever noticed that most handicapped parking spaces have a series of stripes painted on one or both sides of the parking spot? I'm sure before I knew better I was certain they were for playing hopscotch over the lines, or for discretely dumping off your shopping cart when you were too lazy, I mean busy, to walk it all the way to a cart corral or back inside the front door. Then one day I found myself navigating my foreseeable future in a wheelchair and a van with a ramp that goes in and out, and I became very acutely aware of what those painted lines are for, so I'm doing my due diligence to pass this mind-blowing information along to you!
When my ramp is out and I am getting in or out of my van, this is how much room that takes…
Our ramp sticks out a decent amount, and then I have to have room to turn around at the end of it to drive on or off.
See the amount of space left here? This is never going to do. You can see I cannot even get to the bottom of my ramp, let alone turn off of it at the bottom.
How about this one? Nope. It does not seem like they took much space, but this is not enough room to turn onto my ramp to get back in my van.
Assuming I had wanted to back into the spot to the left of this car and use the stripes to exit in my chair… not going to happen!
This was the last handicapped spot left in the parking lot, and this person had the stripes AND the spot blocked!
This one is really just for amusement because this car had a legitimate tag and clearly /wanted/ to park in the handicap spot, I'm just not sure what happened.
So the moral of the story is the lines are for ramps and wheelchairs, not your shopping cart, or two of your tires. If you are parking next to a handicapped spot, please always assume the stripes are needed for a ramp and wheelchair.
Understand it takes a little room to maneuver, so unless you're a fan of door dings and inexplicable tire marks on the side of your vehicle, have a little consideration and please give as much room as safely possible. And for goodness sakes, please never move an orange cone!
Take a little stress off someone with wheelz and make it easier for them to get and out of where they're going on time; you'll make their day, even if you don't get to see it!
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