Dancing the Polka

One of the least useful – and flat-out asinine – pieces of motorcycling advice I’ve encountered over the years is: “Ride like everyone is out to kill you.”

This is so incredibly unhelpful and stupid. If everyone legitimately were trying to kill you, they would. Especially if you were dumb enough to stay on the road. Indeed, if the whole world were to suddenly turn against you with murderous intent, your best, and perhaps only, hope would be to get the hell off your bike, head for the hills, and arm yourself with a pointy stick.

The simple truth is: NO ONE is trying to kill you.

Thinking otherwise “presupposes conflict, aggression and confrontation that you’re better off without,” observes Martin Fitz-Gibbons in the June 2025 issue of Bike magazine (p. 42). “Riding on the road isn’t a war, it’s a dance.”

I’m not entirely sure I agree with Fitz-Gibbons’ take but I get what he means: there is a necessary flow and movement that you should be seeking to work with rather than against. Whether you’re dancing, though, I don’t know. That kind of implies that other road users are your partners, that they’re working with you to achieve something.

Instead, I prefer this adage: Ride like you are almost entirely irrelevant to everyone else.

Because, you are. Nobody wants you dead. And there’s a very, very high chance that they don’t wish you any harm. If not simply because you’re not important enough for them to invest the kind of energy needed to want or consider such things.

This occurred to me recently as I was driving with my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. 

When she and I sing “Wheels on the Bus” we always finish with a verse about the lions on the bus (because our bus is more interesting than your bus full of crying babies and chattering mommies). She has a kind of natural shyness – especially when her father is being silly and singing at the top of his lungs – but if you can get her to do it, her lion’s roar is the most heart-melting thing you’ll ever hear.

I could fill an entirely different blog with posts and thoughts on fatherhood (indeed, I often daydream of starting a podcast to explore the subject) but one of the things that has struck me most is how incredibly important my daughter is to me. 

I am an old dad – we didn’t have Bertie until I was 47 – so I had lived quite a bit of life before she came along. I had experienced all kinds of highs and lows, all kinds of moments of importance and weight and value and relevance. And with the benefit of hindsight I can say, with incredible surety, that none of those moments were as important as my daughter. And off the top of my head, I can’t think of many that were even on par with the importance of hearing my daughter growl like a lion.

Anyhoo, on a recent morning, I was driving along the A27 with my daughter in the back, and we were singing “Wheels on the Bus,” and we got to the part where we sing about lions on the bus going “RAAAWWRRR!”, and after a pause she let out an adorable little growl and smiled shyly at me through the rear-view mirror, and I cheered and laughed and growled back, and suddenly it occurred to me…

…that approximately 93 percent of my attention was inside the car. 

Up to this exact moment, when my focus again turned outward, I had been generally aware that there weren’t any solid objects immediately in front of us. But 200 meters ahead? To our left? Our right? Behind us? 

Oblivious. 

My speed had dropped to 40 mph on a 70mph road. Fortunately, it was a very quiet morning. With my road awareness back online, I saw that there wasn’t anyone 200 meters ahead. Nor anyone to our left or right, nor close enough behind that my drop in speed would have been noticed or problematic. I cursed myself, nonetheless. I’m the motorcycle guy; I’m supposed to have a higher level of road awareness.

But the most important thing in my world had pulled my attention inside the car. And it occurred to me: this sort of thing is happening all the time when I ride my motorcycle. When I’m dancing through traffic, my dance partners are largely unaware of my presence. There are more important things happening in their little worlds.

Those that do notice me, don’t give me high emotional priority. With my face hidden by a helmet, I’m more of an object than a person. An object that one should avoid hitting, sure, but still, you know, an object.

And here’s the thing: there’s no evil in that. Sure, it would be nice if everybody paid more attention. And we should encourage them (and ourselves) to do so. But no one’s trying to kill you. They just don’t care about you. And sometimes there’s going to be a 19-month-old child in the car who is growling like the cutest lion in all of history, and for a certain number of seconds the driver of that car isn’t even going to know you’re there.

So, ride like you are almost entirely irrelevant to everyone else. Dance like nobody’s watching.

“Your job as a rider is to get black-belt awareness,” suggests Rupert Paul in the same Bike article (pp. 41-42). “Awareness of the road and the other folk on it; awareness of yourself and your competence… Grace, speed and precision are all very well, but if your awareness is good you can be pretty safe even without these things.”