Correct.

However, if one of the idiots violates a stop sign (which they do frequently), the resulting carnage is not to you.

You were the one who put yourself and your vehicle at risk by failing to make a good plan ahead of the event. Once the event occurs, the outcome is now out of your control.

You fail to see the irony of the situation whereby you made a conscious choice to put yourself and your vehicle in potential harm, however you wish to rail against those individuals for which you already have prior knowledge will likely do you harm.

It would be far more appropriate to rant against yourself in this thread. It is a certainty that the behavior of those that encountered you and your flares could be predicted in advance (the only variable is the degree of their idiocy). Thankfully, you're not writing about a totalled Mercedes.............or worse.