on street parking creates hazards for drivers and cyclists

I completely agree, at what point did it become legal to block the public highway semi-permanently with private property? In my street, 40% of the width is blocked by parked cars, it's reduced to a single lane. Cars are used on average just 4% of the time in the UK, so they're parked up for 96% of the time. Japan requires you to own or rent an off-street car park before you can buy a car: time Britain adopted that rule too. We need all that space back for cycle tracks and social distancing. Drivists, you've had your fun for a century, this stops now.

Good points raised regarding the increasing size of vehicles in recent years, and increasing numbers of such vehicles on the roads. A friend of mine told me this was to do with a recent rise in leasing vehicles - far more people can afford to lease the SUV of their dreams than could have afforded to buy it. Is this something anyone else has heard of? 

Don't forget about all of the garages that were built in the 80s and before than will never get to see it used by todays inflated vehicles.

yep, bugs me a bit too - isn't there something about taking responsibility for your car or rather cars: if you can't park it - don't own it?  Even on this forum, I'm wondering if that will get some "I can't possibly live any other way" responses.
On a larger scale, Cars also affect the way towns grow - densities are much higher in those central terraced streets and flats than they are in say an 1980/90s built "Bovis" estate further out. In effect, development is that bit more spread out, or consumes more land,  if you allow say 2.0 parking spaces per unit rather than 1.0 or 0.0.  The nice grassy spaces in your typical 1960s "executive" estate now get gobbled-up, of course. 
In my home town, the Council has just proposed a cycle exemption to an existing one way solution to a run of parked-up mainly terraced residential roads. On Facebook, "Oh no," say the driving lobby, "now I've got to think, look and listen for bikes!" - or at least so I'm hoping I've managed to reframe what they were saying.  The OP of that one sounds like a decent guy, and maybe he's joking about damage to his front bumper and bonnet and his getting sued - yes, it seems motorists have managed to add that to their list of fears and all-round ill-used victim-hood. 
around the corner from me is a giant street parked Amorok or whatever it calls itself, pick-up a good foot wider than even today's average car, not a speck of mud on it (of course). Clearly the guy can't park it on his own land, living as he does in an average family house - you just wonder about things like that. Can't be a cheap thing to own. 
on my parents' home town Facebook, there have been proposals for town centre sites to be redeveloped as flats.  The cry is "oh no, more flats = more cars on our 'choked' roads, but wait, there's no dedicated parking: well that'll never work"  -  no parking spaces comes across as some kind of moral outrage!

I'm pretty certain that there is legislation going through Parliament right now to stop pavement parking throughout the country, as it already is illegal in London. Once that becomes law a huge number of car owners and flat dwellers will be in for a rude awakening.

Here in Derby there are still many areas of the city that are row upon row of terraced houses yet the occupiers own multiple cars, but of course they pay "road tax" so everyone else can f**k off.

Does my head in, especially the bell-ends who think that the car gives them right of way at all times whether they are following you revving their engines or driving at you with impunity and showing no consideration for others safety.

I've had quite a few stand-offs with motorists on what are effectively single track roads due to the poor parking on both sides.

You're certainly not the only person that thinks this way - I completely agree! It's a huge issue in the terraced housing areas of sheffield - with cars parked up and down both sides of the street, all that's left is one lane to go up and down both ways. Drivers just about manage (with the inevitable Mexican stand-offs) but such streets certainly aren't much fun to cycle on. I suppose it will take some incredibly bold thinking and massive overhauling of transport infrastructure to ameliorate this problem. After all, the infrastructure in this country is so heavily skewed towards car ownership, the majority of people will want to own one; yet I'm sure that the vast majority of dwellings in this country don't have off-road parking. All these car-owning citizens are voters... it'd take a fairly bold politician, local or national, to stick their neck out on this sort of issue. I suppose that really, everything about driving and our societal reliance on motorized transport is this sort of issue, writ large. Cars are bad for our health through noise and air pollution, they are a constant danger to the life and limb of pedestrians and cyclist by simply being what they are. Yet because we are now 'locked into' that model, it will be incredibly difficult to change, despite its obvious awfulness.