Dan said ...

"The idea behind the handicapped parking spaces
is to allow those who are "mobility impaired" better access to public
places."

That's your interpretation, Dan.  But it's obviously NOT the intent of the
lawmakers who wrote the laws, and included those of us who are blind or
visually-impaired.

If the lawmakers had intended these parking spaces to be reserved solely for
those who are,"mobility impaired," they would not have made them available
to those of us who are visually-impaired as well.

As for what is "required" by a visually-impaired person, it is not for you
to say.  If you can do without utilizing such parking spaces, then by all
means, park elsewhere.  But some of us do find such parking spaces to be,
not just niceties, but necessities.  For instance, I can't find our car when
it's parked somewhere out in the lower forty of a mall.  I can't even see it
when I'm standing right next to it.  So what am I supposed to do?  Wander
aimlessly up and down the aisles of a busy parking lot, where cars are
coming and going, and backing out of parking spaces, without even looking
where they are going, endangering life and limb?  I'm not about to endanger
my life, just to be, what you may well consider to be politically correct.
My life is worth far more than some high-minded ideal.

When we park our car in a handicapped stall, I do not have to cross against
any traffic -- we're along the sidewalk that leads into the stores we're
going to shop in.  I am capable of doing much of my shopping without further
inconveniencing the driver who brought me there.  And so I do.  When I have
my packages, I want to be able to take them to the car that brought me,
freeing myself up to do additional shopping.

I can't do that, if I can't find the car, and I can't find the car, if it's
parked among the hundreds, or even thousands of vehicles in a busy parking
lot.

But as I said, anyone who doesn't want to park there, doesn't have to do so,
and nobody is going to hold a gun to their head to force them to do what
they don't want to do.  All I ask, is that people leave the rest of us
alone, and allow us to do whatever it is that we want to do, whether or not
others like it.  We're perfectly legal, and entirely within our rights.  And
if we're not, then we'll be cited, and brought to trial in a court of law,
and not by some kangaroo court of idealistic, yet not realistic people .

-- George


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