I've learned a *lot* about reading little things about car position and driving patterns - so last night, for example, I saw that red sports car in the rear view mirror swing impatiently around a left-turning car as I was starting up the overpass he was going to have to pass me on momentarily. Hmm... *not* somebody who's going to wait behind me, probably regardless... so when he whipped by I was already moving right and that car coming over the hill didn't have to take evasive action...
The night before I was with a group and in hindsight, we *all* should have stopped at the stop sign. Yea, the car (who had full right of way and no stop) slowed and stopped to let the last of the group throuigh - but the telepathy was that "you guys cut it too close in front, so you are *all* probably idiots and I don't want it on my conscience." I've learned to think "am I by myself or with a group?" and decide differently, depending (yea, I wasn't the leader of this pack but I could have been the first to say "close enough, we're stopping." )
And yes, I've learned that counterintuitively assertive moves are not really "projecting an attitude" - hey, this is the prairie, where it's 'after you, kind sir' - but, rather, really riding where I'm supposed to be. This morning there was construction for half a mile and it was one skinny lane going my direction, and oh, well, there *is* a car in the mirror. I could have shimmied as close to the cones as I could have... but a construction site is awfully unpredictable (and Illinois has its own special lack of legal rights for bicyclists)... so I took the middle and pedalled my buns off. The driver simply slowed down - in fact, when I accelerated, she got further behind. Maybe she stuck the cruise control at 15. After the big fat 30 seconds or so, she simply went around, looking mildly inconvenienced - which tells me she wasn't even going for a good sportsmanship medal. A year ago I'd have probably tried to let her by and we both would have been unhappy - I could *never* have gone that fast hugging the cones, would have been horribly nervous, and she probably wouldn't have tried to go around anyway.