I don't know that it is that drivers are actively trying to kill me. I think it's that there's some phenomenon, yet to be documented by science, that causes people to become more solipsistic when they are operating a motor vehicle.

The net result being, they don't recognize a clear moral difference between cyclists, pedestrians, and orange construction barrels, and see their most noteworthy difference as being the fact that some move faster than others.

As the next sentence says this is a threat model, not a literal description of reality.

To rephrase when I started riding motorcycles I was told "it is better to be wrong and alive than right and dead".

When the risk is my life I won't trust anyone else to make the right decision.

I don't literally think that all drivers are on a murderous rampage but I choose my own actions as if they are.

If it was true, there would be no biker left alive