Who
We are:
- People with disabilities,
- Families of people with disabilities,
- Friends of people with disabilities,
- Colleagues of people with disabilities,
- Fed up with inconsiderate people parking illegally in accessible parking spaces .
Note: Accessible parking spaces are also known as:
- mobility parking spaces
- disability parking spaces
- handicapped parking spaces<shudder>
What
We hope to:
- raise awareness of how often we are unable to park because someone else is using "our" spaces,
- stygmatise disability parking abusers,
- track how often disability parking offenses take place,
- tar and feather repeat offenders (only kidding),
- see active and regular participation from visitors to the site.
Why
Because:
- There are "awareness campaigns" happening all the time. They haven’t appeared to make much difference.
- We still are unable to park. In fact, if it’s raining some of us won’t bother running errands, as we know we will be unable to park.
- This site might make cumulative impact with other awareness campaigns.
- Tracking locations where disability parking offenses happen regularly will assist in discussing monitoring and enforcement with the facility owners or managers, law enforcement, and legislators.
Where
- Anywhere we come across someone parked illegally in an accessible parking space.
When
- Any time we come across someone parked illegally in an accessible parking space.
How
- Take photos of offending vehicles
- Use a cell phone with an integrated digital camera (our favorite option as we have our phone with us all the time).
- Carry your digital camera with you.
- Use a film camera and get the pictures scanned
Keep in mind:
- Keep yourself safe. If you think there’s any chance someone might become aggressive or violent at you taking pictures of their vehicle, don’t do it !!! Your personal safety comes first.
- We’re not on a witch hunt. We aim to capture these parking offenses as we go about our day-to-day activities.
We will expose disability parking offenders. But we will be nice about it.
- Do not harass
- Do not be aggressive.
- Do not be abusive.
- Do not be violent.
What about the offender’s privacy?
Privacy laws obviously vary from country to country, but the vast majority of them focus on disclosure of information about people. We do not publish personal information about individuals, not even their photos (which would be "fair game" in many circumstances anyway). We merely display photos of inanimate objects, and the circumstances of when the photo was taken on the site.
Further, the expectation of privacy for someone parking their car in public are rather limited, considering that said car would have potentially been seen by several people at the time of the infraction.