I've even had drivers pass me dangerously closely when I was riding 17 mph in a 15 mph zone with sharrows printed in the lane. I stop and speak with some of these drivers at the stop light, so I'm not even breaking the law and they literally save zero time. Far too many of these drivers seem surprised that the speed limit is 15 mph as they seem to think they should drive 40 mph or faster.
Thanks also for mentioning the term ‘punishment pass’, googling this led me to some interesting blog posts.
If my memory serves, the responses range wildly. On one end you have completely reasonable and sincere sounding apologies that they accidentally passed me dangerously. Whether or not these were accidents, I don't know. On the other end you have the typical rants against cyclists. In the middle I might help convince bad drivers to treat cyclists nicer.
One time a driver I was speaking to seemed apologetic and some random pedestrian started screaming at me about how I shouldn't be telling drivers what to do. That guy was nuts.
Where in the world is there a 15mph zone where cars can drive 40 that bikes want to go? I cant think of a single 15 mph zone in any of the 6 cities ive lived
To be fair, few drivers seem to actually go 40 mph, though 25-30 mph seems to be regularly observed, particularly on the downhill road next to it (Deloss Dodds Way). I could easily do 30 mph going downhill there. I think the speed limit is 15 in that entire area due to the heavy pedestrian traffic.