Originally Posted by newbojeff
I love the anxiety caused in motorists when they are confronted with the 2 mutually exclusive facts that:
1. They are driving next to a bike and must speed up to pass the bike, and
2. There is a stopped car in front of them and they are going to have to stop.
To the OP, the smartest thing to do is to never intentionally position yourself in a place where you could get smashed. If that means staying behind a vehicle that is blocking your path, so be it.
The dynamic described by newbojeff can be dangerous. A couple weeks ago, I made the mistake of pulling partially in front of a blocked car to get around someone who couldn't complete their right turn because they were also blocked. The guy in the first blocked car laid on the horn and jammed the gas (and then the brake) to lurch forward a few feet so that he could inches from the car in front of him but still totally stuck in the intersection when the light changed.
He had been content not waiting in the middle of an intersection that he wasn't going to be able to get out of until a bike passed him.