In New Zealand, a System To Watch for Disabled Parking Violators

cylonlover writes "What does it mean when a parking spot is marked with a wheelchair symbol? If you answered, 'It means I can park there as long as I'm going to be quick,' you're wrong — yet you're also far from alone. Every day in parking lots all over the world, non-disabled drivers regularly use spaces clearly reserved for the handicapped. They often get away with it, too, unless an attendant happens to check while their vehicle is parked there. Thanks to technology recently developed by New Zealand's Car Parking Technologies (CPT), however, those attendants could soon be notified the instant that a handicapped spot is improperly occupied."

Comments

Re:not haveing a electronic tag = improperly occup

[Kjella]

You're jumping to conclusions. No electronic tag = attendant notified = attendant checks it out, a fine isn't automatically issued.

Re:Good for New Zealand!

[capedgirardeau]

To say the employment of the handicapped declined after passage of the ADA is a great oversimplification.

For example there was a concomitant reclassification of non-disabled people as disable for a number of reasons, the major one being the cutting of welfare benefits which encouraged non-employable people to seek out disabled classification.

That made it look like there was a decrease in employment for employed handicapped folks but that actually turns out not to be the case. The level of employment for previously employed handicapped folks stayed the same or possible increased slightly.

As with most things it is not as simple as a half sentence talking point.

This 2002 follow up (PDF alert) to the MIT 2001 paper that made the claim in the first place, examines in greater detail what possibly occurred:
http://people.virginia.edu/~sns5r/microwkshp/EmpADA_3_02.pdf