Bad bike lane design is so rampant and creates such terrible and very often unsafe situations that I find this is one (but not the only) very good reason to oppose them. Also I don't think you comparision to a consumer product is correct: A backhoe has far more market forces that will drive it towards a good design, the customer will have choices between backhoe designs and this competetiveness will drive out the unusuable backhoes very quickly.

There is far more complexity in designing BLs over WOL, that requires nearly a yard by yard analysis of each and every implementation, with very likely conflicting inputs on how to best make the lane. A WOL is a design principle that my comparision is very easy to be followed.

This is a totally different tangent, but what can be done to prevent (and correct) bad bike lanes designs? I know Serge's answer is that all BLs are bad meaning this is a futile exercise, but going beyond this and for sake of discussion what can be done? I know that I am put in far more ambiguous and somtimes dangerous situations due to poor BL design than any arguably slight benefit I or other may get in the places the lane is 'tollerable'

Al