Why do people with small cars park so badly?

I have never understood why so many people who drive small cars are completely unable to park them competently. Each and every working day, I ride in bike lanes that take me past kilometres of cars parked on the side of the road. Without fail, every day involves at least one dodging action where I have to pull out and go wide to get around a small car that is parked a metre from the kerb.

Here we have an example of one such idiot. When I ride, if I am following another cyclist, I never sit right on their tail and have them block my forward view. I weave from side to side in order to get an idea of what is in front - that's fine so long as there are only a few of you (or two of you) and you are in single file. That sort of action would get you thrown out of a peleton!

Apart from weaving from side to side to look around the bloke in front of me, I look for tell tale signs from the rider that something ahead of us is amiss. Cycling etiquete dictates that the lead cyclist should call out a warning to those behind, but that only seems to happen on organised weekend rides. It rarely happens between commuters. The warning sign for me was when he turned his head to look over his right shoulder to see if someone was coming up behind him - that told me he was about to pull out, which is what happened a few seconds later.

If anyone wants to start doing Parisian-style car-B-Qs in Sydney, they would do well to start with all the ineptly parked small cars that have their bums intruding into bike lanes.