It's either legal to park in a spot or not legal to park in a spot. It doesn't work and certainly doesn't scale to have spots where "maybe I shouldn't park there because I might get in someone's way even though it's a legal spot."
The article mentions that regulations recently changed to allow this, maybe the cops are just using common sense?
2009 is hardly 'recently'...
Yes, it scales like this -> "That's a handicappped-access point, I should park somewhere else." See? Easy.
Why are wheelchairs rolling into the middle of the street? That seems terribly unsafe.