Noticing a distinct increase in unprovoked aggression in drivers towards cyclists?

I’m almost unable to count the number of “incidents” that I’ve had this year. I bike to work and virtually everywhere. Today I was riding across a very short yield-to pedestrian zone with my bike at 290 and 35, and somebody stopped inches from me and just laid into the horn. Totally absurd behavior, and it really drove home just how much I’ve been seeing it recently. Maybe it’s just happenstance.

The absolute craziest was a couple of months ago, when I started crossed an intersection a few seconds before the green (it’s on my daily commute so the timing is burned into me). A guy who absolutely was not going to make the turn before the signal change was apparently so offended by this action that he cut across 3 oncoming lanes far before the actual turn at the intersection just to be able to accelerate straight at me while pounding his horn. It was such a bonkers cut-across that he rode partially onto the sidewalk ahead of me at the end of the intersection in order to maintain his attempt to scare me off the road or something (because he did ultimately stop just next to me when I continued forward in the bike lane instead of falling down or stopping or whatever it was he expected).

Even on calm neighborhood roads these psychos still have issues with me just…being in their sight. Last week someone slowed down next to me on my ride home to hold down the horn for 5 seconds before running off. I can only assume because I dared to pull into the car lane briefly to avoid a garbage can sitting in the bike lane, but since he was nowhere near me when I did…I just have no idea. People just seem to want to destroy me for not being in a car too? I ride an Aventon so I typically go fast enough to not slow people down much even if they do briefly have to drive behind me. I lived in Round Rock last year, and while it was a lot less safe, people were not even close to this pointlessly aggressive about my mere presence.

I dunno. Just getting truly insane and I can’t explain it.

I can handle the endless number of dudes who try to startle me by honking as they pass (the noise-cancelling in my earbuds stops it just shy of being as startlingly loud as it would be otherwise), but this is something very different. The initial impulse to do harm is becoming so apparent, even if they do inevitably stop short of a collision.