Attacked

Fuck the idea that someone attempts to kill your girlfriend while she is riding her bike and you should "make their day a little brighter".

So you want instead to give them the finger and piss them off? When you have to share the road with them and they are clearly not particularly competent drivers to begin with?

Yes, I want to make the experience of endangering someone else's life unpleasant as possible.

I respect cars in the fact that they are bigger than me and have the potential to cause me great physical harm, not in any other sense.

Well if you are using the word 'respect' to mean 'fear' then I agree with you.

If someone does something stupid, doing something aggressive back is unlikely to make them reconsider. In the worst case, it may make them do something even more stupid.

Well then they even more deserving of trouble.

Not respect, just try not to escalate the situation.

If you are defining 'escalate the situation' as 'react' then we have differing opinions.

So if someone cuts you up you break their windscreen? I don't really see how that will make them respect cyclists more. Probably the opposite, even if you are in the right.

That was a device, an illustration.

My goal is not to make the driver who just tried to kill my girlfriend and child 'respect' me (however you are using this meaningless and ever changing word) - it is, as I have already said, to make the experience as unpleasant as possible.