Access
Parking discs can be obtained from filling station shops, and many gift and card shops also sell parking discs. The cheap paper parking dics go for less than one Euro. Big Europen car rental companies such as Europcar and Sixt lend their vehicles equipped with a parking disc. These are commonly left in places such as the two side bags in the front doors and the inside of the cover of the car log book.
Although the design and size of parking discs has been standardized there are often free giveaways with advertisements on the rear. Most parking discs are made of heavy paper, but there is a common variant made of plastic with sharp edges that can also be used as an ice scraper. An illegal variation involves motorized clock discs that move the clock face in a timely manner. In general, clock discs must be set with the arrow pointing to a mark and not any of the white space between, or else it would be invalid and could result in a traffic ticket. As disc parking is common in Europe, virtually all cars there have some kind of parking disc.
Within Europe only the United Kingdom and Denmark have a disabled persons parking scheme where a parking disc is required in certain circumstances. The UK administration offers a variation of the parking disc design that includes the International Symbol of Access wheelchair logo, and a blue clock face in line with the EU blue badge system introduced in 2000.
Read more about this topic: Disc Parking
Famous quotes containing the word access:
“The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don’t want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don’t deserve me.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)