I have been seeing an uptick in cars parked in bike lanes in social media. So I’m going to construct an analogy that puts cars and car users in the same kind of peril as bicycles and cyclists.
Imagine that people are allowed to own howitzers, really big howitzers, and somehow getting things done required shooting your howitzer in random directions and at all hours. Now imagine that getting things done also required driving around pretty much like we do today, except with random artillery shells impacting everywhere, but not the exploding kind. This analogy is horrific enough without shrapnel in the equation. So, you’re trying to go about your daily business except there are large metal objects moving at high speed everywhere and every so often somebody gets hit and either killed or seriously injured. This is the situation cyclists face now without separated infrastructure.
OK now let’s say someone says that this is not a sustainable situation with people getting hit with artillery all the time, and too many people are getting killed. So they set up areas that are artillery-free zones so that people can do their thing without getting hit by cannon fire but there isn’t much separation from falling cannon rounds and it’s highly dependent on the good aim of the people shooting the cannons to not land rounds where the people are. And there really isn’t much room in the zones so that it’s pretty much single file between free-fire ranges, until someone decides they need to put their howitzer in the no-fire zone, completely blocking it and forcing people into the free-fire zone right next to it. And blaming the people leaving the no-fire zone for getting hit in the free-fire zone, because howitzers rule, SUVs drool, and if you get hit it must be your fault somehow. And even when there is a place to put your howitzer a few feet away from the no-fire zone, because for some reason you want/think you need to put your howitzer there in the no-fire zone. This is the equivalent of parking in a bike lane.
Let me put this in a separate paragraph, parking in a bike lane is like forcing people in cars to drive in a free-fire artillery range because it’s more convenient for them. And the person doing it is such a sociopath and narcissist that they don’t care they are forcing you to risk your life for their convenience.
Witch on a Bicycle 