Sometimes it takes a tank to send a message.

Fed up with the number of luxury vehicles parking in a bike path along a main thoroughfare in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, the city’s mayor, Arturas Zuokas, released a video in which he uses some military-grade machinery to crush an illegally parked Mercedes Benz.

Mr. Zuokas appears from photos on his Facebook page to be an avid rider of all manner of alternative transportation: bikes, electric bikes, a Segway. In addition to the car-crushing scene, the video also includes Mr. Zuokas identifying various high-end vehicles, including a Rolls Royce, that have been illegally parked on his city’s central Gedimino Prospektas.



View Larger Map

“Mayor Zuokas wanted his message to be loud and clear that the city will not tolerate brazen and disrespectful behavior by drivers who disobey parking rules,” his spokeswoman, Irma Juskenaite, told the Guardian. “The mayor hopes that he will not have to repeat his performance,” she said, “although he says that he is prepared to do so.”

Posted on the mayor’s YouTube channel and clearly staged, the gonzo public service announcement quickly struck a nerve online, drawing some to imagine their own cities’ mayors in such a role.

Bruce Arthur, a sports columnist for the National Post, based in Toronto, wrote sardonically on Twitter in response to the video: “In Toronto Rob Ford might do this, but he’d run over the cyclists.” (The Toronto mayor, Robert Ford, has said in the past that he does not believe roads are meant for bicycles.)

My colleague Julia Werdigier imagined Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, calling the Ministry of Defense after seeing the video. (Mr. Johnson, a strong advocate for cycling, was himself the object of a viral transportation-related video when he just barely avoided being seriously injured by a passing truck while riding his bike.)

When Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor in New York known for his avid bicycling, was asked whether Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg would consider something similar, he responded: “Firing up the tank right now.”