Vilnius mayor mounts a tank to crush car parked in bike lane | The Envoy - Yahoo! News

It's true that former Soviet republics have unwelcome experience with tanks in the streets of their capitals. But never before, it seems safe to say, has a political leader brought out the heavy artillery to protect the integrity of a bike lane.

But that's just what happened recently when Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, declared virtual war on automobiles crowding out bicycles in designated bike lanes.

Zuokas, who was recently reelected to a second term, clamored into an armored personnel carrier turret to crush a Mercedes parked in a Vilnius bike lane. The resulting mayhem was, of course, captured for posterity on YouTube, in the video below.