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And buy yourself a nice, nice, new wheelchair. The reports that you can flog your badge for approx 5,000 GBP on EBay. Yeah. That'll getcha a chair, or a holiday, or perhaps even a car? (dunno how much cars cost in the UK) -- and you can always apply for a new badge, presumably.

Seriously, though. The whole crip tag thing is out of control. If all the cops are going to do is clamp and/or tow the car of someone who is misusing disabled parking tags, that's just not enough to deter people from doing it. I somewhat prefer the thought that motivates this new law in Chicago: 500 USD for your first offense, 750 for the second, 1,000 and a one year suspension for the third. And possible revocation of your licence. Interestingly, also seems to promise revocation of your disabled placard if you are responsible for allowing a non-disabled person to use it. It's the same thing for misusing your tag in California: here, though, the fine is around 3,500 USD.

I am a little offended that the fine is worse for the disabled person who "allows" someone to misuse a tag than for the abuser (150, if they get caught). It's part of that idea that really, secretly, there's a scam here. We're just in it for the parking. And who knows? I could be running a parking permit lease business. Yeah, all the way to the bank.

That said, nothing has any teeth unless people are willing to enforce it. And social pressure is not enough. In the US, I was pleased to hear that San Francisco police for hours sometimes to catch offenders, but I wonder how often they actually do it. I mean, San Francisco is a big city with a lot going on and although they found the energy to tow my car (parked in a commute zone), I doubt that the cops have much time to spare on a regular basis. It's a funny image, though: two cops, deep undercover, coffee, donuts, and an abused crip tag.

I've only been , but, obviously, all was well. I just wish that public transport was good enough that fewer people -- including me -- drove overall, that public transport was accessible enough that I didn't have to drive, and, finally, that the paratrans services were more available and more reliable.

There's probably nothing we can do about placard proliferation, however. And there are almost always more tags than spaces (and more are issued every year). I don't see a way out of the problem except more vigorous enforcement. And even then ...

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