[meme] Car brains, citing vague "freedom of movement," often say that it should be OK to run over protesters on highways. In turn, it should be legal to set fire to cars parked in bike lanes.
I sincerely think that someone parked in the bike lane (or fire lane or other places you're not supposed to park for safety) should forfeit the protection of law. While your car is there, anyone inconvenienced by it should be allowed to just do whatever.
People are like "well I was just there for a minute!" and I'm like it takes less than a minute for a cyclist to swerve around the ill-placed car, get hit by some other car, and die, so that doesn't seem convincing.
I just don't care that you need your car to be there for personal convenience. Deal with it instead of making it everyone else's problem.
I used to walk and take public transportation or bike just about everywhere. Then I became disabled and had to go back to mostly using a car. Even with my mobility disability, I would never, ever park in a bike lane, double park, park in a fire truck zone, etc. If there is no parking close enough to where I'm trying to go? I don't go there. If it's that important, I'll go back another time and try again.
It's not that hard to not be a dick inconveniencing everybody around you.
Hell, just yesterday I had to change my restaurant plans because I wouldn't have been able to walk the distance required to get to the restaurant because there wasn't any parking nearby. Not a big deal.
If you're just there a minute, there is a correspondingly small chance someone will come along and do something to the car that inconvenienced or endangered them. It all works out just fine. Roll the dice.
Someone should invent a front-side “luggage rack” (battering ram) for a bike that they can pull out to accidentally ram into vehicles left in the bike lane.
The largest single project in the world is the US National Highway System, and yet, somehow, all our public transit and trans-national train services suck.
I love my car, its my home away from home, but I'm all for burning cars that park in place they're not supposed to, like bike lanes and bus stops, it's not hard to park your car in a designated area you lazy fucks.
I gotta say, I'm really lucky where I am now. I'm in a PhD program right now. My husband and I moved to a college town from the big sprawling traffic nightmare that is Houston a few years back. He's able to work from home; I'm able to bike or take the bus to campus. We have just one car for the household, and we get gas once every couple months. It's glorious.
I wish I was a teenager. I'm as far from a teenager as a teenager is from an infant! Obviously you've never been in a bike lane, a car parked in front of you, dense traffic whizzing by to the left of you. If you had, you want to start setting things on fire as well.
But where I live you will get a hefty fine for parking in a bike lane, and after some repeated offenses you'll be sent for a driver's re-education with your license being suspended till you're done. So, I do occasionally see a car being parked in a bike lane. And I don't wanna burn them. I remember I voted for the right party in the last elections, and that I live in the country where law and order prevail, and that the douche will get what he deserves.
In the meantime drivers around me have the ability to see that my lane is blocked, and I have the ability to signal with my hand that I need to merge. We respectfully resolve me cycling around the parked car and I continue my journey.
It appears to me you live in a place where laws really don't work, and so you feel desperate enough to justify property damage to those who don't abide by some laws that you find very important. It's a very dangerous trope. And it rarely leads to better societies.
Wait, are you meaning to imply no one has ever suggested drivers should be allowed to run over protesters in then us? Bills submitted to red-state legislatures have made news.