When the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, took his mayoral might to the boulevards in a fit of anti-automative destruction, Bike Smut was aroused. Now we know that we were not the only ones to be so excited. Mayor Arturas Zoukas has now been honored with the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his radical solution to urban car terror. The citation is specifically for "demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank."
The Ig Nobel prizes are a prestigious award that honors ground-breaking global scientific research. Mayor Zoukas shares this year's award with such luminaries as Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl and Ludwig Huber their paper "No Evidence Of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise Geochelone carbonaria," Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl, Ludwig Huber, Current Zoology, vol. 57, no. 4, 2011. pp. 477-84. Mayor Zoukas traveled to Harvard University last month to receive his Ig Nobel at the awards ceremony.
We congratulate Mayor Zuokas on his achievement. We wish him the greatest success in exploring further innovations in state-sponsered anti-car militancy.
Drivers who park in cycle lanes would normally worry about receiving a fine or perhaps having their vehicle towed. They probably do not expect to have their car crushed beneath the wheels of an armoured personnel carrier which has the local mayor at the controls.
But car owners in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, may be choosing their parking spaces a little more carefully after the city's mayor, Arturas Zuokas, drove over – and wrecked – a Mercedes in a stunt to serve as a warning to anyone who thinks about parking illegally.
...
"In the past few days, expensive cars have been illegally parked in almost this exact place – a Rolls Royce and a Ferrari," says the mayor's narration to the video.
"What should the city do about drivers who think that they are above the law? It seems that a tank is the best solution."
We concur, Mayor Zuokas. Roll on, roll on. Our own team of bike porn scientists is currently hard at work in their secret underground laboratories deep beneath the DIY Bike Fest in Scheveningen, The Netherlands, perfecting the design of a pedal-powered bulldozer that will be capable of accomplishing all of this vengeful justice, but with the unmatched power of human muscle motivation. Soon to come to a bike porn film screening in your town?
