‘Disabled’ drivers faking it for preferred parking

A recent disabled parking disagreement at the Ballito Lifestyle Centre has highlighted the general abuse of disabled parking spaces and the lack of control of this problem.

Ballito resident Malcolm Nesbitt, whose wife Linda is wheelchair bound, said he often has to ask people to park somewhere else if they are clearly not disabled.

“Disabled parking is for disabled people – it is that simple. I recently saw a municipal bakkie with a disabled parking sticker parked in the disabled parking bay, but the driver was not disabled. The fact that people can get disabled parking stickers so easily and abuse the point of these parking bays is terribly frustrating,” said Nesbitt.

QuadPara Association of South Africa (QASA) CEO Ari Seirlis said the major problem with disabled parking discs, is that there is no official disc.

“Unfortunately there is not a national parking disk policy that applies in South Africa. We are part of a stakeholder group that is working on this initiative and there is a draft document in circulation which will eventually go to the department of transport and hopefully into legislation.”

For the time being, he said every municipality has their own rules about getting a wheelchair parking disc.

“This is problematic, as a wheelchair parking disc from the Durban municipality would not necessarily be valid in the Ballito municipality.

“The Road Traffic Act specifies that if you have a wheelchair parking disc, you can use the wheelchair parking facility. The problem with this is that they do not specify who qualifies for the wheelchair parking disc.

“It is the view of QASA that wheelchair parking facilities are there for the use of wheelchair users only, not any other mobility impairment nor any other disability – we are clear about this.

“The parking bay is 3500 mm wide for the purpose of accommodating a wheelchair and these parking bays are often abused by people with other disabilities who do not necessarily need the width of the parking bay, but are taking advantage of the location.”

He said QASA issues a disc of their own to wheelchair users only.

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