To add another datapoint, I first made this observation as a cyclist. Delivery truck drivers are notorious for blocking bike lanes. I spoke with people at the regional offices of FedEx, UPS, and Amazon Logistics. I recall that UPS and Amazon Logistics said their drivers are not supposed to block the bike lanes. (I can't remember what FedEx said.)
I started talking to the drivers. Often the drivers would park in the bike lane when there was a legal parking spot 50 feet away, and this made no sense to me. The impression I got after speaking to a dozen or so was that seconds matter, and they'd rather risk getting a ticket and save 5 seconds than park legally.
It doesn't help that the delivery companies consider these tickets a cost of doing business. As the saying/article states, "a fine is a price". So, basically, the company explicitly says they don't like bad practice X while also implicitly saying they're okay with bad practice X by paying for it.
This is the cuddly version of psychopathy, forcing people to slightly inconvenience cyclists.
This type of situation occurs anytime employee and manager incentives are misaligned, and blame can be shifted to the other. It's not that every human will take the bait-- its that ethical humans will be displaced by unethical ones.
> forcing people to slightly inconvenience cyclists
That's true on average. The inconvenience ranges from none at all to risking death. Fortunately the distribution is heavily skewed towards no inconvenience. I've very slowly become better at merging left from the far right as necessary over the past 5 years. The problem is aggressive drivers who pass too close. They're less than 1% of drivers best I can tell, but they're so bad that they have a strong effect on my behavior.
My current strategy is to start merging left with at least a 10 second gap (roughly) between the upcoming car and me. I turn around, wave my left hand, and wait for the driver to acknowledge me. Usually they nod, wave, or slow down a bit. No acknowledgement means no merging. If the gap is larger then I'll look but won't need acknowledgement to merge.
