Long Blog 4 — Abuse of accessible parking permits
For people with disabilities, it is always a hard time for them to get of their vehicle and walk a long way into the store or services they need to assess. The government issued an accessible parking permit for them to park in particular spots. These spots are specially designed to be wider which has more space to maneuver when getting in and off of theirs vehicle. However, these benefits sometimes received by the wrong people in Toronto.
Abuse of special parking permits for people with disabilities has become so pervasive that on many downtown Toronto streets almost all vehicles display one, a CBC Toronto investigation has found.(CBC News, John Lancaster, Michael Smee)
The last time I went to North York’s Costco the traffic inside the parking lot was so much blocked. This is unusual since it is a regular Sunday morning. My mom and I get off the car and try to figure out the problem. As soon as we went off the car we heard a woman yelling about how her car has been hit. Her words are full of offensive power and make people very uncomfortable. We followed the sound and found the place where the conflict occurred. When we got to that place, we only saw a frail old man sitting in a wheelchair with his care worker standing beside him, receiving fierce condemnation from another woman. And their car blocked the lane and caused a traffic jam. The other people watching this tells us that when the care worker helped the elderly get off the car, he accidentally ran into the woman’s car because the parking space was too narrow. They were planning to park in the special parting place since they do actually really needed it to get off with his wheelchair. However, because of the abuse of parking permits, they would not have free space.
Do not know how you would feel and reflect on these. I personally see this happening really made me deeply influential. Disabled people’s mind is really fragile. According to Shanna K. Kattari’s she states that “Their mental health may be related to these common and often unintentional oppressive interactions.”(Shanna K. Kattari,18 April 2020) Even the common and innocent behaviour would accentually hurt their mental health. Imagine how deeply the woman’s talk would hurt the elderly’s heart. Furthermore, it increases the difficulty for diable people to live a regular life. Broadly speaking it does reflects how people violate one’s own morals for some minor gains. It is not that people do not know that is illegal. It just they try to sneak under the law and rely on a fluke. If this way of thinking spread to more people would greatly affect the well-being of society. These injuries can be avoided, these consequences could be changed.
“On another afternoon, CBC Toronto visited Windsor Street, between Front and Wellington streets. All 17 cars parked that afternoon had accessible parking permits in the windshields, even though some of the drivers clearly should not have been using them.”(CBC News, John Lancaster, Michael Smee)
CBC Toronto did a survey on the usage of accessible parking permits in Toronto. Investigators believe that about 10% of them are used by friends and relatives of the actual permit holder, which is illegal. Service Ontario clearly states that these permits are distributed by the provincial government agency Service Ontario. They can be issued to either a driver or a passenger with a disability who must be in the car for the permit to be valid. Because Toronto has some of the most generous regulations for accessible permit holders. They can park almost anywhere for free. And in the parking lot, the special spots are always the closest to the entrance of the shops. Furthermore, the lack of supervisory capability. Provincial statistics show that as of August, there were about 124,000 accessible parking permits in the City of Toronto, but Moniz says he has only 10 parking enforcement officers with the sole job of catching people abusing the permit system. Which is far away from enough.
In order to change this, first, we need you to spread the story of this elderly illness man. To get people to notice that these stories are happening all around the city, People do need these park spaces desperately. Stimulate people’s conscience and let them reject this behaviour spontaneously. Second, the government should increase the number of officers to catch people abusing the permit system. Wether call the police to intervene while they patrol. Or just hire more people as parking enforcement officers. And I encourage everyone who needed an accessible parking permit to fill out a form and apply for one by using the last link in reference. Let’s work together to make this society a better place for disabled people. It needs us to preside over the justice of this society.
A video recorded a Toronto parking enforcement officer suspects a couple of misusing an accessible parking permit in downtown Toronto. Let’s stop this from happening.
Reference:
Toronto Star, (Sat., April 24, 2021), “How do I apply for an accessible parking permit?”
https://www.thestar.com/autos/advice/2021/04/24/how-do-i-apply-for-an-accessible-parking-permit.html
CBC News, (John Lancaster, Michael Smee), “Some people are using accessible parking permits of relatives who’ve died, police say”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/parking-permit-fraud-toronto-1.4375813
Shanna K. Kattari,( 18 April 2020)
“Ableist Microaggressions and the Mental Health of Disabled Adults”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10597-020-00615-6
Get an accessible parking permit, Service Ontario
