One time, it’s a man in neon orange sneakers, neon yellow t-shirt, and athletic shorts — obviously on his way to or from working out. He exited the drive-thru, beached his vehicle in the non-spot, and came inside to have a barista give him a new lid. Another time, it’s a woman in a massive SUV who chooses to leave her vehicle here in the cross hatch — idling — so she doesn’t have to use an umbrella like an adult to avoid being rained on. She’s there for ten minutes. Another time, it’s a FedEx driver; that motorist carelessly left the delivery truck across two handicapped parking spaces and the diagonal striped zone between them.
This is the view every time I visit this location in Newington in an area that should be (but isn’t, because Newington) transit-oriented development. Most of the motor vehicle operators that I observe “parking” this way were people who had been in the drive-thru line and then found something wrong (or “wrong”) with their order. In all cases, not that it would have mattered, there were several legal parking spaces available nearby. To reduce their walk by a mere five seconds, each of these people potentially inconvenienced someone else.
I wasn’t sure which was more depressing: the possibility that all these people were so self-centered and entitled that they did not care they had parked illegally, or the possibility that they all believed this was some sort of short-term parking spot.
The stripes are not “it’s only for a minute, I just need to do something quick” parking! Is it any less depressing that people could not infer what the lines meant? Why would anyone think that between two handicapped parking spaces there would be some sort of special spot just for those who didn’t want to get rained on or couldn’t be bothered to park in the next row and turn off their land yacht while they went inside? If every other parking space one encounters is marked one way, why would anyone think that this diagonal striped anomaly was also a parking space? If you weren’t sure what the cross hatch meant, wouldn’t the assumption be that it was a third handicapped parking space because that’s who is given priority parking?
Is it possible to fix selfishness? I don’t know. Ignorance, though, can be mended with education. It helps when people don’t come at it with all their defensiveness about why they felt justified in parking there.
I looked at the Connecticut DMV driver’s manual, and found no mention of the access aisle or “gore” as it is sometimes called. This is even after the online edition was finally updated to reflect changes after being five years out-of-date. Although parking is part of driving and there is a glancing mention of handicapped parking, you have to search the Internet to find more details. Still, the details exist. All you have to do is search “what are those cross hatch lines in parking lots for.”
The diagonal lines next to a handicapped parking space have a name: access aisle. Handicapped parking spaces themselves are usually close to a building and maybe slightly wider than other parking spots; the access aisle provides an extra buffer so that people can actually enter/exit vehicles that have ramps.
The ADA website provides this diagram that might shed light on why the space is needed:
As others have succinctly explained, the access aisle “is strictly off limits for parking to anyone, regardless of whether or not they have a handicapped license plate or placard.”
Anyone should really be everyone.
The one exception isn’t any of the self-important people running inside to have their drive-thru orders fixed. It’s an ambulance, and not just because someone in it is having a triple shot latte emergency. The ambulance that is (or about to be) transporting a patient is allowed to be parked in a handicapped space “for up to 15 minutes while assisting the patient.”
Though they are not named, we can assume that fire trucks and police vehicles used in active response to an emergency would also be given a free pass. Again, not firefighters or cops looking for a good spot while they get their coffee or even following up on a previous situation, but people responding to an active emergency.
The photos in this post were taken when nobody was violating another’s rights because I wanted people to be able to look at the space when they weren’t also trying to park. This is directly by the building entrance, and besides carrying the obvious and super well-marked blue-and-white symbols, one indicates that a space is for passenger vans that carry those with disabilities and their drivers would be informed that they may only park in this kind of spot when transporting passengers — not while the driver was on their lunch break.
Handicapped parking restrictions definitely carry over to the cross hatch (access aisle):
Personally, I would change that to a tow on the second violation, but either way, that’s a lot less convenient, than say, parking two spots away like someone could have done in the first place.
This is one of those times when I am reminded of how folks beg for signs and colors to get drivers to change behavior: just as hi-vis yellow signs and shirts don’t prevent motorists from crashing into pedestrians, blue & white paint does not dissuade all drivers (without placards) from abandoning their rides in handicapped spaces. And, as we see, common sense has not told people that the giant lines that communicate “NO” don’t keep drivers out of the access aisle.
To recap:
- only vehicles with handicapped placards are allowed to be parked in handicapped spaces
- no vehicles — with or without handicapped placards — are allowed to be parked in the access aisle; that space allows for opened doors and ramps to assist in loading/unloading passengers
- ambulances actively being used to assist someone with a medical emergency are the only vehicle treated as an exception
