There's a massive difference between a pedestrian being laid hands on, pushed, beaten, etc. and a car driver being shouted at.
The situation was the same, the tools were different. I have translated the situation into a pedestrian one. If she was a pedestrian, you wouldn't stay here saying she made it worse, you would point out the aggressiveness of the blockers.
Here it's the same, a car's window is not a safe protection against violence.
For example, the car driver has a car around himself so no hands were laid upon the person at all
No hands were laid upon the cyclists either, and none of them was hurt in any way. My example still stands. If you want to understand how and why they behaved like they did, you have to take the general situation and motives into account -first-. The rest comes -after-
... and the car driver can floor it at any time if the shit were to properly hit the fan, for example once someone does indeed smash the car with the lock after she drives into people.
That is simply not true. After the window crashes, any untrained person will be dazed for a few instant by the noise and the debris flying around, thus remaining undefended against probable subsequent hits, like, literally, sitting ducks. And after the first hit, the dazing just gets worse.
I think you badly misjudge the reaction of a standard person confronted with unexpected sudden danger, and I think you think too much outside real conditions and into movie-like scenario.
Any normal person would try to leave well before having someone hitting at her car's in any way, let alone becoming dangerous. That is standard psychology.
I'm not saying she caused it, the idiot cyclists caused the incident to begin. She just made it worse by creeping at the guy blocking her (maybe hitting him in the process), and by driving into people at 1:48.
You see, I might tell you, and it would be true, that she could have stayed calm and submissed, waiting for the raging apes to scream their superiority to everyone else. She would have got no harm. None at all. But, you see, that is exactly like saying that a woman, for example, shouldn't wear a short skirt when going out, or walking alone at night in certain areas, and that if something happened, "she looked for it".
Of course she could avoid all of this by doing something different, but everytime she does, everytime any of us chooses not to do something legal and wanted just because of the social, or physical, threat represented by some opposing will, she is losing - all of us are losing - part of her, of our, freedom.
To concede to those presumptuous, arrogant, self-appointed paladins of "a better world" the ability to unlawfully dictate you when you should go, when you should stop, when you should wait, what you should drive, how you should behave, means to give away some of our freedom. Of course you are intelligently safer by giving in to them, but you are subjugating to their unlawful and constraining will. And it's not like the police will stop critical mass from going around either. So by acting safer, you are slowly losing your freedom. It's a sad choice between two equally important things.
At some point, someone will try to put a stop to this injustice, otherwise they will get to the point where they tell you where and what to drive, maybe even how to dress.
She did just that; she refused to aknowledge their requests, and she stood tall against them. And of course a confrontation ensued with the first cyclist, who tried to force his will on her again by blocking her lawful way. She moved towards him, maybe she nudged him, signifying that she wasn't giving in, and he went crazy, obviously.
That's psychology, not driving. And it's pretty easy psychology too.
He called his friends. She intelligently gave up and tried to move away. They wanted for her to stop, to show that their victory was complete, to humiliate her because she dared to disagree with them and to oppose them and to show how feeble they really are (a lycraed man confronted to a 2 ton car -again, it's basic psychology-), so when she moved away, they tried to physically block her by putting their hands and bicycles on her car. She mustn't move.
Again, it's psychology.
She stood tall again (thanks to the might of her vehicle, which allowed her to do so - it's again a show of strength-), and pushed on, against their will and physical actions, and they went crazy, because they were losing the confrontation, and started hitting and smashing the car.
Of course she then pressed on the gas pedal, threaded on a couple of bicycles and got her victory and her liberty.
The cyclists, they lost. Twice, as the police understood the situation and arrested him, not her. Luckily for everyone, I'd say.
For the third time, THIS is what happened there. A show of strength and dominance. Not a traffic situation.
And she, as reckless as she was, was the "good guy".