While I completely agree that people can be very hot-headed but it is an instigating move. Say you finger someone and they come up to you to confront you. Then what? You just lock yourself in your car and call the police? If I finger someone I feel that I'm egging them on and I only do it if I'm prepared to back it up. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Just my $0.02

I'm not saying people shouldn't chill out, but the reality is there are plenty of people out there who won't hesitate to pull you out of your car for flipping them off. So knowing that, and yet you still do it, you better be ready to deal with the consequences.

just because there were witnesses, doesn't mean they were willing to cooperate with police. There's a difference.

Although flipping someone the bird isn't grounds for having your car damaged or being beat up... OP has to realize that there are nutsos out there. I agree with you in that you should be prepared for the situation to escalate if you do something like that..... If someone accidentally bumped into OP on the sidewalk, would OP say "fuck you!", and not expect them to react to that? Some may but some def won't.

Again, what that guy did was wrong, but OP wasn't so innocent either. People are always quick to jump to the conclusion that the other driver is deliberately putting them at risk during traffic incidents. If the same situation happened on the sidewalk or in the shopping mall, people usually brush it off as an accident or no big deal... Something about being in a vehicle makes people think they are untouchable. Everyone probably has been in a situation where they were honked at and almost caused an accident without even know and when they did realize, they were like "oh shit my bad". Who knows.. this guy probably had no idea why OP honked and subsequently flipped him off.. . . Just putting another perspective out there.

They were, and gave a statement to the police. Two separate vehicles and 3 different people all said the same thing.
Cop did nothing about it because the guy denied he did anything despite the paint transfer and the witness statements.

I can understand that its our word against there's but letting people like this allowed to drive on the road and get away with crap like this......fain on the North Van RCMP right there.

After this experience..

http://i.imgur.com/Le0vMTl.jpg

hmmm that's a shame... did ICBC take care of it? If you report it to ICBC, they can conduct their own investigation and get the \Police report. If there are witnesses to support your side of the story, you should be ok.