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> while someone with a placard pulls in and walks in - clearly a cheat

As you've also mentioned, I can't stress this enough - you don't have to look handicapped to have a disability.

Some people with disabilities can walk - but with difficulty. Some people with disabilities can't walk very far. Some people with disabilities can walk most of the time - but sometimes, their legs go out from under them, and why-the-hell-should-we-not-just-give-them-the-handicapped spot?

Both my mother, and my mother-in-law have disabilities. They suffer through them - and if it weren't for my mother-in-law's cane, at first glance, you wouldn't know.

And some can even walk normally. I used to know someone like that--serious heart defect but her body was otherwise normal. She wasn't supposed to walk any farther than she had to.

And it's also possible to legitimately park in a handicapped space with no handicapped person in the car. I've done it before--I was picking up the person to whom the placard belonged.

Great comment:

I look ok -- I can walk ok -- but only for about 50 yards before I fatigue. And it gets worse when the weather is hot. I too have MS. When people see me limping they assume I have a sporting injury!

Yes I am sure there are some that "cheat" but do not rush to judge. You never know!

LA Times is writing about a California issue, where disabled spots are uniquely crowded. This is bad for people who are disabled. They truly need these spots but often can't find any available due to abuse. This has been documented extensively:

> Just inside the city limits, in Old Sacramento, Investigative Reporter Thom Jensen found nearly every disabled parking spot was taken. Dozens more metered spots also had cars and trucks in them - parked free of charge.

http://www.abc10.com/news/local/one-out-of-every-8-californi...

> At any given moment, on any given street, more than a third of the vehicles displaying the tags -- and parking without paying -- are doing so illegally, say officials with the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/22/local/la-me-disabled...

You see this pretty much everywhere. At the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, it's not uncommon to see a family park at one of the coveted disabled spots right next to the slopes, take down four pairs of skis, and start hitting the pow. The UCLA football team was discovered a while back to be possessing placards.

I was walking to work this morning in Westwood LA. All the street parking on my way to work were vehicles with handicapped placards, who are exempt from time limitations in parking, and of course don't have to pay (another weird thing about CA). All the cars were very nice (various high-end German and Japanese luxury cars), which isn't unusual for LA, but still noteworthy.

I have never seen this anywhere else in the US, even in snowbird-heavy Tucson Arizona. Something is definitely different in LA, maybe it is just easier to abuse the system here? I don't want to judge, I didn't see any of these people get in and out of their cars (it was early in the morning), but...it definitely feels weird.

A shirt-tail relative stepped on a land mine in Vietnam. They amputated one leg below the knee--the other leg had a lot of scars also. But he was an athletic guy to start with, and did not appear to walk with any difficulty. I gather that he did get dirty looks from some when he parked in a handicapped spot and walked away briskly.

I worked with someone who is probably 6'4 and fairly robust looking. He'd get dirty looks parking an H1 in a disabled spot. But he "clanked" when he walked, so I don't think people held it against him for long