Originally Posted by UniChris

Drivers yielding to you when they're not supposed to can indeed be very frustrating - especially because one driver doing so doesn't mean that the others you'd interact with if you took that invitation are also going to be accommodating.

You'd think that things like slowing or even stopping well short of the intersection would make your intentions clear, but they'll even do it then, too.

To be fair though, you can readily see people in threads right here angrily demanding that drivers accommodate beyond the law in this manner - nevermind how dangerous it is to accept that invitation, or get used to expecting deference outside the law, they insist that such deference be made.

Further, your own words "I have no confidence in their intentions...." are how a lot of drivers actually do feel about cyclists - they don't know if we're going to stop in those many, many places where it's actually the cars that have the right of way, so they assume that we're not going to, and that assumption becomes such a habit that the inertia of assuming we're not going to stop continues even after we have stopped.
We need people on both sides to actually follow the laws.