Supermarket car parks

[tiggerblue10]

I know they have CCTV to monitor if you exceed 2 hours stay or something like that but does anyone actually monitor who parks in the disabled and parent & child spaces? The reason I ask is because I went to Tesco earlier and as I was passing by the parent and child bays a woman had just parked in one of them and was coming out of her car with no child/baby. As I walked past her car there was no car seat in there either. There were no other parent and child bays available and I thought this was so selfish of the woman.

Luckily my dad was looking after little Tiggs so I parked somewhere near the back of the car park where there was a few spaces where this woman could have parked.

[tiggerblue10]

I suppose sticking a blue sticky notice on the windscreen is a good deterrant however I would never dream of parking in a space other than those designated to my needs i.e. with my baby. If I'm not with him I will just use a ordinary space.

[starone]

You can prove that the person who has left their car in a disabled space is disabled by the display of their blue Disabled cards but how can you prove the car in the mother and child space actually is a mother and child unless you wait to catch them in the act.which could be a long time. I don't think the supermarket would be able to spare a person just to stand there watching. Can a father and child have the same facility? I have noticed women on their own assuming because they have a car seat for the baby they can take advantage although the baby is not actually with them.

[tigwig]

This annoys me so much too and as a childminder I have 3 children in the back of my car all under the age of 2, both doors need to be opened at each side to actually get the children out which is very difficult in a normal space. My baby is still in his infant carrier seat and unless I can get in a parent and child space the door cannot actually be opened wide enough to get him out. I once had to take up 2 normal spaces to get all the kids out, you should have seen how some people glared at me. If morons did not selfishly park in spaces they shouldn't I wouldn't have to do that. I agree that they should be away from the door too to act as a deterrent. As long as there is a safe walkway to the door and trolleys nearby it doesn't matter how far you have to walk. At my local supermarket some of the disabled bays are quite far away and are nearly always empty because elderly people cannot walk that far and park in the p & c instead. That irritates me too, the spaces need to be swapped around.

[Buenchico]

Many of the traffic surveys I've worked on have involved monitoring the traffic around supermarket car parks. That means that my own car often has to be parked there for 12 (or even 15) hours. So I've had to take great care to get to know the people who actually monitor the car parks, in order not to get my own car 'ticketed'.

Policies seem to differ greatly, even on the same car park. For example, at the Asda on the Norwich outer ring road, some parts of the car park are regularly patrolled (with particular attention being paid to the disabled and 'p&c' bays) with a zero-tolerance policy towards anyone who breaks the rules. However the 'bottom' section of the car park isn't patrolled at all. You could park there for weeks at a time without any problems.

While, like you Tiggerblue, I detest people who park in the wrong areas just because they're lazy, I've sometimes parked in a disabled area (without a badge) for legitimate reasons. For example I had an elderly friend in my car, who had only come out of hospital (after a hip replacement) a few hours earlier. We went to a Norwich branch of Tesco, so that she could do some shopping. I offered to do it for it but she insisted on going into the store herself. I got a really foul look from a disabled motorist when I used a disabled bay, but that changed to a warm smile when my elderly friend exited the car on crutches.

Chris