As part of Accessibility Week, Fundación Jean Maggi and VML Argentina unveiled the MONSTER CHAIR, a striking wheelchair with oversized wheels designed to spotlight a problem that is as common as it is frustrating: cars blocking access ramps and limiting accessibility in our cities.
Related, but not Argentina:
On my trip around the US south, something stood out to me in TN: there were signs posted in some parking lots that explicitly said people needed to park in the parking spots. It felt weird until I tried to park in a busy parking lot and saw why.
There were cars parked in no parking zones, including ramps, walkways, and fire lanes.
There were cars parked on sidewalks.
There were cars parked on the grass past the sidewalks.
I could barely navigate the parking lot on foot. I have no idea how I’d do so in a wheelchair.
Also, while I call out TN, it’s not uncommon to see cars parked in no parking zones and especially in front of ramps and walkways across the rest of the US.
It’s sad to see that this is a common issue in many parts of the world. Raising awareness can help, but there really probably needs to be more strict enforcement.
There were cars parked in no parking zones, including ramps, walkways, and fire lanes. There were cars parked on sidewalks. There were cars parked on the grass past the sidewalks. I could barely navigate the parking lot on foot. I have no idea how I’d do so in a wheelchair.
When I lived in France some 20+ years ago, I had a friend who was blind. He lived right downtown, and (at least at the time) the French tend to park wherever in busy cities and don’t give two shits. So he would regularly walk on the sidewalk, and his dog would stop because there was a car parked right there on the sidewalk, blocking most of it.
He had lived there all his life, so he knew perfectly well how to navigate around cars parked on the sidewalk. But he always made a point of stumbling clumsily around the car, feigning to be extremely inconvenienced and trying desperately to find how to pass the obstruction, hitting the paint job as hard as he could with his cane as if he was quite lost and distressed. Then, after having given the car a good walloping, he would stop, sit on the hood and call the police to have the car towed.
He figured even if the car’s owner was around, they were at fault and they wouldn’t dare do anything to a blind man hitting their poorly parked car. And indeed, a few times he had a run-in with the owner. But while they screamed and shouted, they always stopped shot of getting physical. And passersby further ensured they wouldn’t dare.
