-When encountering a pirate, unless you're 100% sure you can safely escape and have no intention of cooperating, stop immediately.
As a pirate, how I treat traders depends a lot on their initial reaction. I can guarantee I'll be nicer to those that stop at once without being prompted, and say hello.
Some navigation tips, particularly for large transports and trains:
-Use vertical strafe. Very often, you'll need to enter a trade lane that's considerably higher or lower than your position over a short distance. This leads to a less than ideal angle of approach, which can be remedied to an extent by using strafe.
Actually this is true for horizontal strafe as well, but I guess vertical strafing is less obvious.
-When approaching a lane or gate at a very poor angle (close to 90°), target the point at which you're planning to press dock, and engage engine kill a couple k before you reach it. (When cruising, when on thrusters a couple hundred meters).
Then, when in engine kill mode, turn your ship to face the target while you glide towards it.
Remember that you won't decelerate instantly upon exiting engine kill mode, so do it early enough to avoid overshooting your target.
-When you're reaching the end of a tradelane and your next target is to your right, engage free flight slightly before you leave the lane completely; that way, you're aligned better with your next target and gain a little time because you skip the relatively slow final deceleration process upon exiting the lane.