To have been upset by this encounter today

Where I live a blue badge holder parks within a few feet of a junction, many people have told him it is dangerous and illegal to park there but he persists insisting he can park anywhere as he has the badge. He is the sort that would park in a parent and child place just because he can.

This must have been so upsetting for the elderly couple. I was with a friend who is disabled with a blue badge and we had just pulled into a disabled parking place. Suddenly a shouting man appeared and said he would report me to the police, said that I was on camera, and that I could have killed someone. I remained polite and I was so shocked and upset. My crime? I had driven the car the wrong way to the spot. Nobody has the right to shout at someone in this manner, regardless of how bad a day they are having. No excuses!

The rules now are so much more nuanced.
There are people who have no mobility problems but other reasons to need disabled spaces.
People who look fine, but are living with health problems.
The best thing to do is have a little patience with others issues, not fly off the handle without listening.

My daughter has similar problems on occasion. She is a blue badge holder but does not look disabled. She is 32, pretty, well groomed and looks healthy (good make up!). However she has severe lung disease and chronic asthma and can’t walk far without becoming wheezy (especially when it’s cold) so it is helpful for her to park near the entrance of large stores and she does like to get out when she can. People have been most rude and even aggressive to her. I’m sorry to say some were elderly people who think she is somehow usurping their rights. She had similar problems in some circumstances when not ‘masking up’ (impossible for her as she could not breathe wearing one ) although she did not go out much when Covid was rife and has a job where she usually works from home anyway. Once in her doctors surgery she was told by a very uppity receptionist to mask up and move her car from the disabled area after a complaint! It took an asthma attack in the surgery (getting upset can bring one on too) and her doctors intervention to put it right. I would urge everyone to be as kind and considerate (and polite!) to others as they can and to not judge by appearances which can be misleading.

My daughter always found being disabled needed far more room than having a child in a buggy.
There is the problem of getting in and out of the car; all sorts of things.

Peaseblossom

I'm presuming there were also disabled parking spaces, so maybe she thought they should have parked in one of them? They had parked in a parent and child space, instead of a disabled parking space. She would have got a telling off if she had parked in a disabled space! As someone said, parents need more space because of getting their child in and out of a child seat.

The disabled spaces were full so he had to use a p&c space. He did try to explain but she wasn't listening.

In my book there is no excuse for rudeness but all too often we meet it and aggressiveness in modern life. Perhaps people are very stressed but we do seem to have a lot of me attitudes. The ‘how dare you ask my Johnny not to sit on the high wall round your football ground. We will do what we like”. You speak up waiting for abuse to come. Occasionally it doesn’t. It’s so refreshing when someone says ‘sorry’ and stops doing whatever it was.

I'm presuming there were also disabled parking spaces, so maybe she thought they should have parked in one of them? They had parked in a parent and child space, instead of a disabled parking space. She would have got a telling off if she had parked in a disabled space! As someone said, parents need more space because of getting their child in and out of a child seat.

I would have reported it to customer services.
Nobody has the right to be so aggressive, regardless of their own circumstances.
That is just entitlement, to think it excuses shitty behaviour.

Awful situation to witness. Parent and child parking spaces are only provided as an "aid" for customers, there is absolutely no entitlement that only a vehicle with children can use them. The young woman needs to get real. I do get annoyed when I go to my local shops, see neighbours using these "children" parking spaces when I see the same children out playing football (where they shouldn't), 5 year olds doing gymnastics,using electric scooters, climbing trees, wheelies on bikes on the local footpaths. If a child can do that surely they can get in and out of a car with reasonable care. Another example of Entitlement afraid. Well done the man.

ElaineI

Does sound like the Mum was OTT but in my area there are way more disabled spaces than P&C spaces and in some places the normal spaces are much further to walk. I use a P&C space with DGC as it is safer and there is so much more to carry even if you don't have a buggy, also the car doors need opening to their fullest to get a toddler out a car seat so I have been annoyed if a blue badge person has parked in one and I have had to park in a smaller space however would not confront anyone. Regarding normal spaces - not everyone who has mobility problems has a blue badge and if they are far away because the nearer spaces are disabled spaces then I have had to hirple to the store getting there in pain and flustered. Regarding the post - if I had parked in the wrong space and been confronted I would have moved. The young mother might have been up most of the night with her child/baby, she might have had to deal with a tantruming toddler or she might have PND - no one knows what someone else has had to cope with in the period before. If I saw that happening - unless there was violence, I would neither intervene nor complain to customer services. chances are they sorted it themselves anyway.

as i understand it, the minimum percentage of blue badge spaces in a car park is fixed by law, but P and C spaces are a courtesy and no minimum is needed.

When I worked in customer service, I was told when someone was abusive that we didn't know what was going on in their world.
Sorry, but I can think of many times when I wasn't well, I was caring for my father who had heart failure as well as working full time , and I still had to keep smiling!
Yes the mother may have been having problems - just maybe she was running late, hadn't slept well, etc but that doesn't give her the right to be rude to a total stranger.
The attitude of saying what you like, to who you like,when you like, seems to have got worse over the last few years and surely it is time that we all thought twice before opening our mouths ?

Thank god for online grocery deliveries. I would have LOVED them when I had small children. A lot has changed in 25 years hasn't it?

Yes, I was skinny Maggie maybe, pushing proms, lifting a toddler, or am and baby onto the bus.
I’m so pleased my daughters have it easier, though not easy of course

Interesting comments about how it was in our day. We didn’t have a car till our eldest was 4, and we’d 3 children by then. Like many others I’d to walk nearly 2 miles to the shops and 2 miles back, pushing a coach built pram with a toddler seat on top, and then later with two children in a double buggy, carrying DS in a baby sling. The buses were such a palaver as pushchairs had to be folded. And then I could only get the basics anyway, as they’d to fit under said pram or buggy. Times have changed, thank goodness!

Would I want my own children to have to do that? No I would not!

It kept me slim though.

"It’s interesting that more than one poster on here who actually needs a space for people with disabilities has said that they wouldn’t take up a parent and child spot. Good on them, that’s really thoughtful."

I'm afraid I have the opposite view. If I have the kids with me I would far prefer that a disabled person took the last p&c space, than went home without their shopping.
I can manage, they can't.

trisher

It isn't clear from the OP if there were any disabled parking bays available. If there were he was obviously just using the P&C space because it was closer and the mum had a right to be cross.
As for the man of course he remained calm He'd got the space.

No the disabled bays were full and this was the only space left that was close to the door of the supermarket. The poor man was trying to explain this to the angry young woman.

The supermarkets around here have lots more P&C spaces than BB ones. Both are frequently used by people who can’t park their 4x4s and just feel they are justified in using the wider spaces. The P&C ones are used a lot by people with older children, as if an 8 or 9 yo can’t walk a few extra steps.

I’m not sure in the case of the OP how CS would have sorted it out but can understand that witnessing abuse or an argument can be upsetting, so good for you that you reported it.

Goodness knows how we managed all these years ago before there were P&C parking spaces -but somehow we did!

I have been in this man's situation, I parked in an unmarked bay went shopping and came back to a barage of very bad language from a young mother.
She claimed I had parked so close to her she could not get the child inside the car. She had neither found a wide bay nor one for mothers and children of which there were lots empty.
I never answered her except to say I would reverse out and let her open the car door and hold the child if she wished until she put the buggy in the boot. All of which I did. I could have just reversed out and left her still in the same fix as there was another car waiting to use my bay. I got no thanks at all.

It isn't clear from the OP if there were any disabled parking bays available. If there were he was obviously just using the P&C space because it was closer and the mum had a right to be cross.
As for the man of course he remained calm He'd got the space.

I have appreciated P&C spaces whenever I have had my GC in the car and would not see them abolished, but Blue Badge spaces are a necessity for many and should always take precedence. Mind you, with so many 4x4 type cars , the extra width is fast becoming necessary.
When my children were small I used to shop at the Arndale Centre in Wandsworth (long gone I believe) . Sainsbury’s was on the ground floor with a multi-storey car park above. Trolleys had to be returned to the store so once you had paid for your shopping (and packed it into bags) you wheeled your trolley containing toddler and shopping to the lifts, went up to whichever floor, decanted shopping into boot, wheeled trolley plus toddler (in the baby seat) back down to the shop, got your 10p back and then trailed back up to the car , carrying toddler who was bored, hungry and stroppy by then, to the car, hoping you had not overstayed your 2 hour parking limit!
If only somebody had invented P&C spaces especially on the ground floor or even outside the shop!

Sarnia

It has never made a lot of sense to me why there are M&C spaces in car parks. Why do young and presumably fit mothers need to be right by the entrances? What I would rather see are more of the wider spaces for the larger vehicles to use but they should not be designated solely for M&C.

The wider spaces near the entrance are provided for the safety of young children, not the convenience of parents. As others have said, the extra space is to allow for the door to be fully opened when children are taken out of car seats, or put into pushchairs. In this area there are very few parent and child spaces as opposed to spaces for people with disabilities, and they’re usually in demand.

It’s interesting that more than one poster on here who actually needs a space for people with disabilities has said that they wouldn’t take up a parent and child spot. Good on them, that’s really thoughtful.

I once parked in the road put the blue badges up, unloaded my son and went into a shop. When I came out an overzealous traffic warden had slapped a parking penalty on the vehicle which was specially adapted and had a road tax exemption badge, but I had apparently displayed the badges on my side rather than kerbside! I had to appeal to the chief constable to get it rescinded.

25Avalon

Beswitched interestingly enough it is not illegal to park in a disabled bay. If it is on the road you will be issued with a fine. In private car parks including supermarkets it is different again and the policing is carried out by the supermarket which varies from one supermarket to another. Legally supermarkets have to provide disabled parking as part of the Equalities Act. They do not have to enforce who parks in it. Waitrose don’t as they say they trust their customers. You don’t even have to have a blue badge but some supermarkets such as Tescos’s insist on it so they can see if you are disabled and if not their car parking firm will issue a fine. Sainsbury’s attendants will ask you to move and if you don’t will issue a fine. Aldi issue fines.

Just shows we all have conceptions and misconceptions about disabled and blue badge parking. Parking in a disabled bay if you aren’t is disgusting.

Thanks, that's interesting.

I agree that parking in a disabled space without a blue badge is awful behaviour.

I don't have a problem with other groups in need eg someone recovering from surgery, an elderly person without a blue badge parking in a p&c space if it makes their life a bit easier.
But for a disabled person an appropriate space is the difference between being able to access the shop, and having to go home without their shopping.