@ascentale@sam Strait into A2, huh? 😜 I think this can be so context-dependent that it's hard to give universal advice.
What can help sometimes is disarming - doing something happy or innocent or "crazy" they don't expect. An non-cycling example is that a friend of mine used to pick up something someone littered and very happy, innocent, gave it back to them saying "Hi! Hi! You dropped this!" as if it were a $20 bill they'd dropped. While some people can be angry in response, #BikeNite