Straight off the Ca DMV website.
Once you have a valid DP parking placard or DP License Plates, you may park:
- In parking spaces with the International Symbol of Access (wheelchair symbol).
- Next to a blue curb authorized for persons with disabilities parking.
- Next to a green curb (green curbs indicate limited time parking) for as long as you wish.
- In an on-street metered parking space at no charge.
- In an area that indicates it requires a resident or merchant permit.
In addition to parking privileges, service stations must refuel a disabled person’s vehicle at self-service rates unless the service facility has only one employee on duty.
You may not park:
- In spaces marked with a crosshatched pattern next to a parking space with the International Symbol of Access (wheelchair symbol). These spaces are for wheelchair and wheelchair lift access.
- Next to red curbs, which indicate no stopping, standing, or parking.
- Next to yellow curbs, which are for commercial vehicles to load and unload passengers or freight.
- Next to white curbs, which are for loading and unloading passengers or depositing mail in an adjacent mailbox.
Those signs you see for food pickup or for a store to bring out your groceries, along with merchant signs that reserve certain spaces for their customers, unless the merchant is the owner of the parking lot, have no force of law. Here whether an officer will ticket a miscreant in a store parking lot for handicap violations is really up to the officer. Although I suppose you could report an officer that didn't to his bosses.
In my area we have two parking enforcement folks who love to cruise parking lots for handicap violations. I'm pretty sure they pay their salaries every month and then some.
