Able-bodied Courier Country shoppers parking in disabled supermarket parking spaces should be fined, a paraplegic Dundee woman said.
The 51-year-old, who did not want to be identified, spoke of her frustration at the amount of culprits at Dundee’s Asda Kirkton store, some of whom even pretended to be disabled when spotted.
And a Dundee pensioner said she had stopped shopping at the Milton of Craigie Asda store due to the number of motorists using the spaces illegally.
The woman said: “Often they do silly things when they see me or another disabled person get out of a car, they’ll affect a limp. Of course, by the time they get in the shop they’ve forgotten about it. It’s just sheer frustration on the whole.
“In the old days, people didn’t drive as much and they were prepared to walk further from their car. Now they want to be parked as close as possible.”
When The Courier visited the Asda Kirkton car park a number of vehicles without Blue Badges were parked in disabled spaces with no wardens in attendance.
However, the woman said that the issue was not just confined to the Derwent Avenue store.
She said: “It’s the supermarkets I have the problem with, every single one of them. You’ll always find people there who don’t have a Blue Badge.
“I live beside Asda in Kirkton and today every disabled space was full. I can guarantee you only a third, and that’s being generous, will be disabled people.
“There are no badges on, they just think: ‘I’ll only be two minutes’.”
An Asda spokeswoman said a private parking company looked after the Kirkton store and issued penalty notices to those parking in disabled bays without a Blue Badge.
The woman said: “I’ve never seen them there. The big Asda at Milton of Craigie said they use an outside company and they never know when the parking people will be there, but I’ve certainly never seen any parking people at the Kirkton store.”
“When I was first in the wheelchair, I would complain if I saw someone parking there without a Blue Badge.
“But to be honest, you’re wasting your time. You see the occasional person looking guilty who will probably think about it in future.
“I think the difficulty is that if you’ve never been disabled or never needed the space, you can’t appreciate what it means for somebody else to have that space available.
“If there were people going around the car parks enforcing it and getting fined for it, they’d be far more likely not to park in a space they weren’t entitled to use.
“Without a deterrent, people will continue to abuse them.”
Doris Dalson, 72, from Fintry, said she had started shopping at Morrisons due to the large amount of disabled spaces and the relatively small number of able-bodied drivers using them.
She said: “I’ve confronted people in the past, I’ve had abuse. It’s very common.”
An Asda spokeswoman said: “Smart Parking look after the majority of our car parks including the Kirkton store, whether this is by colleagues patrolling the car parks or the ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) system.
“Any customer found to be parking in a disabled bay that doesn’t have a valid blue badge will receive a parking charge notice. This is to ensure these spaces are kept available for the customers who need them the most.”