22/03/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18Zwbsnpc7/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Nothing in British driving culture reveals a person's character quite like their reaction to a motorbike filtering through stationary traffic.
You're in a queue.
You've been in this queue for eleven minutes.
You have accepted the queue.
You and the queue have reached an understanding.
And then a motorcycle appears in your mirror.
Moving.
Actually moving.
Gliding serenely between the lanes like it's on a completely different planet to the rest of you.
Getting somewhere.
While you sit.
And something happens in the British driver's brain that cannot be fully explained by science.
Rage.
Pure, irrational, almost beautiful rage.
At someone who is not even slightly inconveniencing them.
The queue is not moving.
You are not moving.
The motorbike passing you has not taken your space.
Has not delayed your journey by a single second.
Has not affected your life in any measurable way whatsoever.
And yet.
There it is.
The slight drift toward the white line.
The unnecessary nudge forward.
The thousand yard stare of a person who has decided that if they're suffering, everyone's suffering.
Here's the thing though.
Filtering is legal.
Has always been legal.
Is actively encouraged by the Highway Code as a way of reducing congestion.
Every motorbike that filters through traffic is one fewer car in the queue.
Making the queue shorter.
For everyone.
Including the person doing the angry drift toward the white line.
Who is, in a very real sense, trying to make their own journey longer out of spite.
Which is the most British thing imaginable.
We will cut off our nose to spite our face.
Sit in unnecessary traffic.
Inconvenience ourselves enormously.
Just to make sure nobody else gets away with something.
Even if that something is entirely legal.
Even if it's actively helping us.
Even if the alternative is a motorbike rider sitting in the same queue getting slowly cooked alive in full leathers on a warm Tuesday afternoon.
Let them through.
I'm begging you.
The queue will still be there when they're gone.
It always is.
