As a returning player myself from a very long hiatus I have also encountered pirates whilst I'm trading.
The first was in liberty where I stopped when he said stop and when he demanded 5 million credits I asked him if he could give me a better offer, to which he offered to let me go free IF I worked for him for the next little while. Which I did as his hostage and even made some money from it.
Next was in Rheinland where I was asked to stop and I got caught when my tradelane bugged, I didn't run. He demanded some credits, in response I demanded 10 times the amount of credits from him for wasting my time and hurled mountains of abuse his way, after which he threatened to blow up my ship so I paid him and warned him that should we ever cross paths again I would bring a bazooka and use it on his cat.
In both of these interactions the pirate players would've been more than justified in blowing up my ship without skipping a heartbeat, yet they didn't. This leaves me to conclude my experience has been very different from you. There must be a reason for this and the most likely reason is because I stopped and RPed with them.