Parking by Ear

 by Paul Hein

Handicapped parking is not in the same category as terrorist attacks, but nonetheless worth thinking about. Most of us will encounter handicapped parking spaces more often than we’ll come up against suicidal killers, and handicapped parking is an excellent example of how government operates at the ordinary hum-drum level of things.

Of course, there is no reason why government should be involved at all. Store owners could designated some of their prime parking spaces for handicapped drivers, and customers could respect them on the honor system. If most citizens are in agreement with the concept of special parking places for the handicapped, the system will work quite well without the element of coercion--i.e., government. In any event, the matter is hardly serious enough to encumber with arrests and legal penalties.

But, sadly, government has inserted itself into the parking place. Merely being a quadriplegic would not entitle you to the use of the handicapped parking places unless you had some official designation of your handicap from government, in the form of handicapped plates, or some other government-issued form of identification, on your car. This means that, in order to preserve at least the appearance of due process, the term “handicapped” must be defined. In Missouri, that means that a physician, podiatrist, or chiropractor must certify that you fit into one of the following categories:

1)  You cannot walk 50 feet without stopping to rest. (301.142.1[1] RsMo.)  (What if you can walk 51 feet?  Out of luck?)

2)  You cannot walk without assistance from a brace, cane, crutch, another person, wheelchair, etc. (301.1342.1[2] RsMo)  (OK, simple enough!  No bureaucrat is needed here.)

3)  You have lung disease so that your forced respiratory expiratory volume for one second, when measured by spirometry, is less than one liter, or the arterial oxygen tension is less than 60 mm Hg on room air at rest.  (301.142.1[3] RsMo)  (Wow!  Nothing simple about that one! Carry your doctor’s statement with you at all times, lest you be accused of feigning a handicap.)

4)  You use portable oxygen. (301.142.1[4] RsMo)  (Again, most of us could figure that you were handicapped without official assistance.)

5)  You have cardiac disease placing you in Class III or Class IV of the standards of the American Heart Association.  (301.142.1[5] RsMo)  (Better have “Class III (or IV) AHA” tattooed on your forehead, just in case.)

6)  You are severely limited in your ability to walk due to arthritis, neurological, or orthopedic disease. (301.142.1[6] RsMo)  (When we see you limping, we’ll figure it out. You’re handicapped!)

As an ophthalmologist, I’m particularly interested in the final qualification. I’ve often joked that I never have to complete forms for persons seeking handicapped parking plates, because the handicap that I would be attesting to is blindness.  Was I ever wrong!  Here is the final category:  (And I recently filled out the form!)

7)  You are blind, as defined in Section 8.7000 RsMo (301.142.1 RsMo)  Blind! Well, what does it say in Section 8.7? It says that a blind person is one who has been determined to have not more than 20/200 central visual acuity in the better eye with correcting lenses, or an equally disabling loss of visual field of 20 degrees at its widest. Well, 20/200 is legal blindness, so that a person can get handicapped plates for his car if he is--at best-- legally blind in his better eye. Of course, such a person probably could not pass the eye exam in the first place (although I have one patient who is one-eyed, and legally blind in that eye, who has a driver’s license) but I guess to point that out would be to discriminate against the blind. Or maybe the license was obtained prior to the onset of blindness. Anyway, everybody else with a handicap can get special plates, why not the blind?

Under a private, voluntary system, it would not be necessary to define the handicaps which allow one to use the handicapped parking places. Most of us could judge rightly that a person who was hobbling into the store on another’s arm, or using a wheelchair, or walker, or cane, or who had to stop every few feet to rest, or was sucking on a tank of oxygen, was handicapped, and entitled to use the handicapped parking. We wouldn’t need spirometry, the standards of the Heart Association, or a physician’s statement. We certainly wouldn’t need certification by some bureaucrat. But what would we think about someone who emerged from his car with a white cane, or guide dog, and felt his way into the store!

This is government at work. It complicates something that’s basically simple and does it idiotically to boot. If it can’t do a simple job well, imagine what it does with important ones. Why do we need it? And hey!--what about deaf people? Should I talk louder? Where do they park?

January 14, 2002