Points for parking in a disabled space

Saturday September 4th was the day when the work of shopping centre managers became easier. The new Traffic Law Act, which provides the legal means for fining people who ignore the regulations, has become their ally in the fight against inconsiderate drivers
Zuzanna Wiak

The first Saturday of September was judgment day for all those thoughtless enough to block exit routes for fire services, staircases, or who parked on lawns or on disabled parking spaces without batting an eyelid. From now on people parking illegally on internal roads and in car parks will not go unpunished. New laws enable offending drivers to be punished with penalties severe enough to prompt drivers who are ‘happy’ to pay fines to complain to the Integration association. It is this organisation that has been trying to educate drivers for many years and has contributed to the updating of the Traffic Law Act. “The act has had a preventive effect on the customers of our shopping centres, and since it was implemented we have seen a considerably lower number of drivers parking in prohibited spaces,” explains Justyna Kur, director of the real estate department of Apsys Polska. “According to our assessment, the new regulations have not changed a lot because we have always made sure that parking spaces for the disabled or for mothers with children were available. The problem with occupying priority spaces occurs most often when the number of parking spaces is insufficient. Since the introduction of the new regulations there has been no need to call in the police, because the regulations themselves provide more options for making sure that priority spaces are always available. We do not see any need for increasing the number of priority spaces in our car parks because most often they are not fully occupied,” claims Wojciech Knawa, the managing director of Est-on Projekt Echo 17, which is responsible for the management of Echo Investment’s facilities, including eight shopping centres and three shopping and entertainment centres.
The key to success Đ long-term education
Before the introduction of the new regulations, shopping centre managers experienced many problems with drivers. “I have noticed a gradual change in drivers’ attitudes to parking on disabled spaces over the last 10-12 years,” notes Justyna Kur. She adds that: “However, in order for this consideration for others to become the rule, we have been trying to educate our customers. We have organised a lot of social campaigns: we have handed out leaflets, e.g. resembling a symbolic penalty ticket, and we have put up billboards with the slogan: ‘You have taken my space, so take away my disability, too’ above disabled spaces. We also actively participated in the parking campaign in 2008 and 2009 that was run by the Association of Friends for Integration under a banner reading ‘Would you really want to be in our place?’ There have been radio broadcasts in our centres and posters informing people about the campaign. Unfortunately, not all drivers have complied with security guards’ requests not to park in prohibited spaces. “The lack of free parking spaces for the disabled is most noticeable during times of high traffic intensity, for example, before holidays. Disabled people are participating more and more actively in the social sphere. As many as 60,000 of them have started working in the last two years. Before the implementation of the new law, security guards in shopping centres were reluctant to approach customers who were parked incorrectly because in fact they had no legal power to intervene.  It was also awkward for some shopping centre owners and managers because they did not want to antagonise their regular shoppers. Now security guards can intervene and the penalty is severe enough to discourage drivers from occupying disabled spaces,” points out Piotr Pawłowski, the chairman of the management board of Integration. Arkadia is another Warsaw shopping centre that has tried to force drivers to respect disabled parking. The owners of incorrectly parked vehicles were issued with notices by the security staff of the shopping centre; in addition to this, their licence plate numbers were broadcast over the tannoy system. The system is currently also used to alert people on how to find the information point about the changes in the traffic law and the penalties for ignoring traffic signs in the car park. “We launched a social campaign in 2005 aimed at raising the awareness of drivers who parked on spaces which were not intended for them. We have produced TV commercials, handed out leaflets and left fines underneath windscreen wipers. We wanted to reach as many people as possible with our campaign. Of course we have not fully managed to get the message across, and that is why some drivers are still ending up paying the fines,” adds Piotr Pawłowski.
Barriers that cannot be overcome?
According to Piotr Pawłowski there is still a lot to do in Polish shopping centres. The most important thing at the moment is training the staff so that they do not feel uncertain about what to do when they see a disabled person. Shopping centre owners often forget that the disabled are not just people who move around in wheelchairs, but are also those with hearing or visual disabilities. Their comfort when shopping and the amount of money spent in shopping centres will depend on how highly qualified the staff is. “Shopping centres are great places for a lot of people with disabilities. Shops, entertainment centres, cinemas and restaurants are located in a relatively small area. The proximity of these services is a great plus,” argues Piotr Pawłowski. Unfortunately, there is still a lot to be done in order to make Polish shopping centres comfortable places for disabled people. But in the fifteen years of its existence no investor has ever approached the Integration organisation to ask for help with designing a building to make it accessible for all customers – and not only the fully-abled ones. This was the case with the newly-opened football stadium in Poznań. Unfortunately, the audit was not successful. The newly-opened Fryderyk Chopin Museum has also not been adapted to the needs of all visitors. Correcting design errors is, however, very costly. Perhaps it would be possible to avoid them by introducing the French regulation that if an investor, developer or architect does not comply with accessibility rules, they incur a penalty of EUR 45,000 (in the case of re-offending this might even go up to as much as EUR 75,000 and a six-month prison sentence), a five-year suspension of the right to operate as a business, the closing down of the business, and the return of subsidies and sanctions provided for in the labour code for people with limited abilities that have been discriminated against. ?
A costly deterrent
Illegally parking your car in a space for the disabled incurs a fine of PLN 500 – a mere trifle, you might thnik. But if you add to this the cost of your car being towed away by the municipal police, which amounts to PLN 388, the fine grows by a significant amount. For violation of the ‘no waiting’ sign there is a fine of PLN 100 and one penalty point; for violating the ‘no entry’ sign it is PLN 500 and one penalty point, and the fine for violation of the ‘no motor vehicles except for motorcycles’ sign comes to PLN 250 and one penalty point.