Meet the Wheelchair User Solving Accessible Parking Abuse

After 15 years of collecting data and working to improve the accessible parking system, Mack Marsh is confident that he has the solution to end accessible parking abuse. Not only that can summarize it in a word: education.

Before laughing, consider that Marsh not only leaves the ball. It is one of the few tangible people who addresses one of the most irregular and unbridled accessibility problems in the United States. Its non -profit organization, parking mobility, collects violation reports from all over the world and has implemented criminal education programs for communities of all Texas. «We have a county here in Texas, where the third year in the program, we issued more than 3,000 appointments in that county, and a single appointment was not issued to a resident of that county,» he says. Then, in three years, his team educated an entire community.

Marsh knows that he and his team have found an effective solution because they have real world data to try it. «We have had more than 25,000 people who have passed through our criminal education course and we have only had eight repeated criminals,» he says. «That is almost a 0%recidivism rate, which is unheard of in a program like this.»

For Marsh, the biggest question is how to expand the program to begin to have an impact throughout the country.

A (Heat) Genius coup

Timely, the Marsh path to become one of the main defenders of the Nation for the accessible parking reform began with someone blocking the space for its ramp. Only a few months after leaving the rehabilitation of the 2001 spinal cord injury that made him a quad C6, Marsh attended a baseball game with his young son. When the Heat of Louisiana began to reach him, he and his son went to enter the truck, just to find that someone had parked in the striped area, blocking his entrance. His son ran to get help, but it was too late.

«I didn’t realize that my body does not regulate its temperature,» he says. «When my son returned, I had passed out for a heat stroke and went to the hospital in an ambulance.»

Marsh’s frustration was aggravated by the understanding that the person who had blocked his access never learned the impact of his actions. “When that guy returned from his ball game, he got on his car and left and never knew what happened. He never educated, ”says Marsh. «That really put me in a course to better understand this problem.»

Exasperation in action

Marsh and a small team launched parking mobility in 2010. In its first iterations, the non -profit organization revolved around a free application that facilitated users to inform the parking offenders with disabilities using their smartphone camera . «They exasperated me why people could not solve this problem, why the police would do nothing about it and why the judges were not doing anything about it,» he says.

A «self -proclaimed data type, Marsh imagined the application as a data collection tool that would help defenders to show policy formulators the need for a reform.

The application gathered more than 1,000 reports per week, and additional data were revealing. He highlighted two critical problems: 1) Lack of education, and 2) The fines were not changing the behavior. “People think that punishing offenders will change their behavior, but the recidivism rate between people who receive a ticket, people who pay the fine and then repeat themselves, is more than 60%. Therefore, high fines do not change the behavior, ”says Marsh.

The mobility of the parking lot worked to develop a solution that incorporated these realities and also the fact that confronting offenders in the place rarely achieves the desired impact.

“People who face the infringement point go to the fight or on the flight. If they enter the way of struggle, they will justify a lot and say ugly things. They will intensify the problem, but they will not change their behavior. They will repeat offend, ”he says. “If they enter the flight mode, they tend to apologize and promise to never do it again. The reality is that they do it again, because it does not educate them. They are not open to that education at the point of infraction. »

A better solution

The offenders trapped through the parking mobility application receive a ticket by mail a week later, informing them that they have the option of taking a class instead of paying the fine. «That leads them to that education, which then involves them in a really positive way, and not in a negative and punitive way,» he says.

Parking mobility adapts its education programs to local rules, regulations and customs. They currently operate these programs in 15 Texas communities and seeks to expand. A large metropolitan city in Texas told Marsh that he loved his program, but did not want to implement it because he could not afford to lose the income of $ 3.5 million that generated accessible parking offenders.

Without flinching, the mobility of swamps and parking continue to look for local partners throughout the country. Ideally, mobility parking wants to associate with local non -profit organizations to communicate with legislators about the adoption of their program. «[We need] Local superstars that are willing to use the application correctly and willing to work with us to speak and learn to speak with their community leaders, ”he says. The application can help non -profit partners to generate income, since parking mobility shares a percentage of contracts signed with local municipalities, in addition to sharing violations and educational rates.

UNITED SPINALS ASSOCIATION He recognized Marsh’s efforts in 2024 by selecting it as the first prize winner James J. Peters Community Builder, in honor of a person who has achieved significant social progress for wheelchair users in the field of rights, services support, accessibility or professional advance.

Marsh has a clear message for anyone who has been affected, frustrated and even enraged by accessible parking offenders. “I get angry. Yes. I have been angry in front of me, but you have to direct that anger in a positive direction. You have to be able to adopt a proactive approach. Get involved with a program such as parking mobility, or if you already have a volunteer program in your community, become part of that so that you can address this problem properly, ”he says.

For more information about parking mobility, visit parking lot.comOr send an email to Marsh to mack@parkmobility.org. To obtain answers to all your questions about the parking lot for disabled, including application, defense and more, be sure to download United Spinal’s The full guide for accessible parking. This free electronic pango was created by a working group of United Spinal members to educate the public and promote a better application of the disabled parking.