Asshat! - Printable Version

+- InsaneTrain Forums (https://insanetrain.com)
+-- Forum: General (https://insanetrain.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: General Forum (https://insanetrain.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=8)
+--- Thread: Asshat! (/showthread.php?tid=25667)

---

Asshat! - Bill - 06-16-2005

Bravo on the blog!

I'm certainly not against people with physical handicaps being given accomodations to allow them access to the things that non-handicapped people have. However, it becomes rather ridiculous when you pull into a Walmart parking lot and there are 4,000 handicap parking spaces right up front and you have to park 2 miles from the store so that Moses can lead you across the parking lot to the front door. Who in the fuck decided that 4,000 handicap people might one day decend upon this one store all at the same time? And why do they get to park in the front. Most of them ride in electric cars or have motorized wheel chairs. Giving them larger parking spaces is enough, but they should be randomly located throughout the parking lot so that they do not get preferential treatment in the location of their parking spaces.
><br />I would suggest that every new store have a 24 hour surveillance monitor placed on the handicapped parking spaces. If, after one year, there were never more than half of them filled at any one time, then they should have to eliminate some of them. Get the number down to a more justifiable number. My theory is that if you happened to limit the number of spaces and then, by some wild freak of science, that more than that number of handicapped people did show up, then they would probably still find a place to park somewhere out in the other spaces that would work. Maybe just double park on one of the outlaying spaces. I'll even go as far as to gamble that if they drove around the lot a couple of times like the rest of us, that one of those handicapped people that was parked would be leaving and they could get their spot.
><br />Now, those wheel chair ramps are getting a little ridiculous also. I drove by a rest stop in rural nowhere, where there was a picnic bench on the side of the road that had been there for probably 40 years. Now, that picnic bench had been "updated" to make it handicap accessible. There was now a handicap parking space, and a concrete ramp that must have been at least 400 feet long. It zigzagged back and forth because there was limited land space there to build the ramp. I am pretty sure the Egyptians built shorter ramps to push stones up the pyramids. If I had been an engineer for the Parks Department when some intern brought me the plans for upgrading this picnic bench, I would have said, "Oh fuck it, that would not only look stupid, but we have to way the cost versus the benefit". If there are other handicap accessible places within a reasonable distance that could serve the same function as this picnic bench, then how about we let this one slip through the cracks?
><br />I was in a parking garage the other day and there was an elevator that led up to the building. The elevator had "Braille" numbers on the pad. I would hate for that blind guy that just parked in the garage not to be able to find his way up the elevator. You would think that if he is blind and still able to drive a car and park it, that he would be able to navigate an elevator.
><br />I'm not prejudice against handicap people, I just think it gets a little ridiculous sometimes.

---