Lithuania mayor tackles bike lane problem: Armored cavalry

Jamie included a brief link to this hilarious video this morning in the Breakfast Links, but several of you have submitted this to tips, so it’s probably worth running on its own.

The mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania got so sick of luxury cars parking in the bicycle lanes that he “http://jalopnik.com/5826496/mayor-crushes-misparked-luxury-car-with-troop-carrier”>shot a photo-op driving over a Mercedes in a Soviet armored personnel carrier.

(The original is in Lithuanian.)

The mayor, Arturas Zuokas, told the Irish Times, “I wanted to send a message… I want to point out that if you have a car and more money it doesn’t mean that you can park it everywhere. Recently there’s been an increase in this type of parking violations, and it shows a lack of respect for others.”

It’s a staged PSA and they aren’t really running over people’s cars with tanks, but how many US mayors would really say “if you have a car and more money, it doesn’t mean that you can park it everywhere?” Based on the rhetoric of many parking policy debates, a number of DC Councilmembers seem to actually think just the opposite.

And while many people who ride bicycles have likely fantasized about being able to do just this, it says something about the political culture of Vilnius versus American cities that a political figure would actually consider it to be a positive, rather than negative, to make such a statement.

Thanks for reading!