This is comment is a little late, but perhaps still an interesting tale. I had a very similar experience to the author's about 10 years ago. Except I was paying attention to the traffic and along with two other friends was crossing Taranaki St, on a green cross signal when a large European convertible ripped round the corner missing us by centimetres. The driver was talking on a mobile phone and I yelled at him something to the effect of "get off the effing phone and try driving". As I walked on with my companions the car screeched to a halt the driver jumped out and started after me hurling abuse and threatening violent retrobution. I pointed out that he had nearly run us over which seemed to antagonise him more and he instructed me to get back there so we could settle it in a physical fashion. I waved him off and left him going ape shit on the pavement. That's not to say I wasn't massively wound up, just uninterested in physical confrontation with someone because they nearly ran me over.

I discovered later that he was a quite well known property developer (and laterly TV 'personality' and football uberfan) who has since fallen on hard times. I figured at the time he'd probably done too much coke that day.