After the first over the bars incident, I was taking everything slow.

I definitely think this calls for a re-evaluation of my lighting. I forget the term for it, but I recall reading about the military using large arrays of not-very-bright lights to camoflauge vehicles against the bright background of the sky. I would have thought a blinking headlight would reduce that kind of effect.

Of course, if someone never looks in your direction, it won't much matter what you're wearing, or what your lights look like (although really bright blinkies may draw a glance that wouldn't otherwise occur). I couldn't tell for sure whether I was looked at in incident #1, as the windows were quite tinted. Numbers 2 through 4, nobody looked at me until afterwards, if at all.