I don't park in handicap spaces but I don't get bothered or call out someone who does who apperas not to be handicapped. First, as many have stated you seldom really know the person's story. Second, I just don't care as it is not my place to play parking lot cop. They are not causing me any problems.
I grab whatever other parking space that I can whether it be close to the door or far out. The only time that I make a real effort to get close to the building and might even drive in circles for a couple minutes is when it is pouring down rain. Other times I figure that my fat ass could use the walk.
Agreed. Although I believe there are far too many handicapped spaces in most places around here (because most of them are usually empty), and some of the people don't look disabled to me, they could have some non-obvious disability. It's not my place to make that determination.
I also don't understand people who feel that they have to park six feet from the door at a supermarket or shopping center when they're going to be walking more than a mile once they're inside. I've seen traffic jams in half-empty parking lots caused by people hovering near the "good" spots waiting for openings, despite there being open spots a mere 30 or 40 feet away.
Even more amusing were the early-morning gym patrons I used to laugh at when I had a fitness center in Great Neck as an account. I'd be leaving just as they were showing up, and they'd all be fighting over the closest parking spaces to the gym so they wouldn't have to walk too far to do their workouts. It was especially comical because the arguments got very heated, and most of the patrons were wealthy women driving luxury cars and wearing furs and other expensive clothes. Watching all those rich dames fighting over a handful of parking spaces in an otherwise-empty lot was always good for yuks.
On a related note, one of the supermarkets near me instituted "parents with small children" parking spaces a few months ago ago. Between the excessive number of empty handicapped spaces and the largely-empty "parents with small children" spaces, any unaccompanied adult was exiled to the farthest reaches of the parking lot.
It didn't last long, though. Pretty much everyone ignored the signs, and the local cops refused to even attempt to enforce the restriction. When a store employee told me I couldn't park in one of the spaces, I told him fine, I'd shop somewhere else, and left. Apparently others did the same because after about a month, the signs were taken down.
Rich