Sir, – As disabled drivers well know, there are often a very limited number of dedicated parking spaces available to them. It is particularly galling therefore to witness a perfectly healthy person get out of the car and walk purposefully away with the disabled permit left on the dashboard and the permit holder’s photograph face down.
This is allowable according to the current EU regulations, which require the permit to be displayed with the side showing the permit number and the expiry date upwards, but why is it not possible to have the photograph on the same side? Such an arrangement would allow a traffic warden to photograph the car registration number along with the driver’s photograph and see if the two correspond with the licence number, which can, of course, be easily checked. As a further aid to recognition, the permit should be placed in a pocket similar to those for the tax and insurance discs and fixed to the windscreen in the same way. – Yours, etc,