Help a guy out...

hippy No it doesn't. Let's say I ride considerately, taking car not to cut up any cars, etc.
Some cnut will still knock me over or get angry and take issue just for me being there. Fsck 'em.
Treat me nice and I will treat you nice, try and run me over and I'll consider adding GT stripes to your paint job.. and I don't mean the racing kind.

And another "Hell Yeah!"

20 years of fucking polite cycling has seen me actually clear a car (rear to front) in Wood Green, has seen me with broken thumb and chipped bone in my foot (still there, still loose) - has seen me winded on the floor in the West end with road rash more than half a dozen times - in bed with a badly swollen thigh - in hospital with a fractured rib and minor pneumothorax and numerous other minor injuries.

Fuck all that, people don't learn from me staying invisible, especially when they have knowingly risked taking my life to reduce their traveling time by a few seconds.

What I have learnt is to ride much more aggressively, much more confrontationally, I do not ride in the gutter, getting out of the way of every car who cannot wait to speed up to the red lights 100 yards ahead, I stand my ground and if threatened I will react in the way nature intended, not with deference to some arbitrary law or set of road ethics, but by showing the driver that it is not acceptable to risk injuring a fellow human.

I believe (and of course cannot say for sure) that this has made me safer (perhaps experience plays its part).

I would rather throw my bike in front of a car to stop it moving off after an incident and tell the driver exactly what I feel about him or her nearly taking my life - rather than curtail my natural instincts and drag both the driver and myself through months of officialdom to arrive at pretty much the same place.