Nuxx:4e38421b$0$2942$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!news3.google.com!feeder.news-service.com!de-l.enfer-du-nord.net!feeder2.enfer-du-nord.net!news-transit.tcx.org.uk!nntp-feed.chiark.greenend.org.uk!ewrotcd!feeds.news.ox.ac.uk!news.ox.ac.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!reader02.news.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e38421b$0$2942$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Parking in cycle lanes - how to deal with selfish drivers. Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:29:44 +0100 References:  <99qno7Fha9U1@mid.individual.net>   Lines: 62 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:5.0) Gecko/20110624 Thunderbird/5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To:  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: b3d00290.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=oLd3Y]EVP9mYjZGX^207Pk` > "Mr Pounder"  wrote in message > news:j19cdg$5gt$1@dont-email.me... > >>> >>>> A video shows how the mayor of Vilnius metes out justice to lazy >>>> drivers. >>> >>>> QUOTE: >>>> "Practically every city and town in the Western world is blighted by >>>> people >>>> who disregard the rules and park wherever they like. >>>> The threat of heavy fines may keep the average man from ditching his >>>> car in >>>> the bicycle lane, but it's hardly a deterrent for the very wealthy. >>>> In London, Middle Eastern playboys and princes are notorious for >>>> parking >>>> outside their favourite department stores, but it seems like the >>>> problem is >>>> even more widespread in the city of Vilnius in Lithuania. >>>> Sick of the sight of luxury cars in the wrong place, local mayor >>>> Arturas >>>> Zuokas came up with a campaign video we can all get behind. >>>> Rather than personally ticket the offending drivers or tow cars >>>> away, the >>>> robust city official decided to run one over with a Soviet-era armoured >>>> personnel carrier." >>> >>>> http://uk.autoblog.com/2011/08/02/video-lithuanian-mayor-crushes-parking-rule-benders/ >>>> > >> >> >> Simon, if you think this is so wonderful - the gates to the airport >> are always open. > > I don't fly, Mr P - I use the local ferry instead and I actually walked > down that street shown in the video last year. In any case, lighten up, > this is a cycling NG and that act was as amusing as Clarkson blowing up > a bike with a bomb on Top Gear.

Except that Clarkson wouldn't really want to go round blowing up bicycles, but some psycholists do (as we've seen) get a kick out of vandalising cars, and would doubtless love to be able to crush them if they could (not for "illegal parking" or any other such excuse, but just because they're cars).

Anyone who thinks that running over a car just for being in a cycle lane is "justice" is suffering from a particularly unpleasant strain of car-haters' disease (one of the symptoms of which is persistent advocacy of ludicrously disproportionate punishments for utterly trivial motoring infractions which are actually just excuses for inflicting the punishments). The only known cure for car-haters' disease is to think very hard about what the world would really be like if all cars disappeared tomorrow, and realise that it would be very far indeed from the utopia that you have simplistically imagined until now.

That's why so few reasonable people agree that cars need to disappear: it's not because they're "selfish", or "brainwashed", or "misguided", it's because they know what's best for society, they're not loonies, and they know a good thing (cars) when they see it.