I would try VERY hard to avoid one of these crowds - backing up, making a U-turn, taking a side street, whatever I possibly could do.
But I don't understand how an attempt to forcibly open the doors of an occupied vehicle would NOT prompt the driver to keep the car in gear and press the gas pedal to the floor, making use of his 4000 lb battering ram . . . pedestrians, even the threatening, violent type, make for a squishy barricade.