> And one woman, upon being confronted about leaving her cart, declared, “I have really bad vertigo,” before getting behind the wheel and driving away. To be clear: Disabilities deserve accommodation. But if you could push the full cart to your car, why couldn’t you return the empty one?

FWIW, the cart itself can serve as a mobility aid for some types of disabilities. So the hard part might be walking back alone from returning the cart, and that person might view abandoned carts next to open parking spots as a good thing for where they themselves want to park to minimize the cartless walking. I'm certainly not trying to justify the overall trend, just talking about this one particular example.