John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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7 comments
I know that junction quite well as it is one of two I could choose from for my commute.
All those junctions off the A1231, and across Washington generally.are evil and nasty for people on bikes as they are all basically motorway junctions.
None of the junction have no provision for safe cycling at all, although the junction I use is currently having the path along one side widened to 3 metres and made shared as part of a scheme to create a "Trans Sunderland" cycle route to link the C2C with North Sunderland and Nissan.
That doesn't help poor people like this man who will have just been trying to get to work somewhere else, and shows that the UK needs safe separated cycling infra everywhere
Fuck all will change. The slaughter, sorry carnage, will continue. Our fucking politicians considering losing several hundred cyclists each year is a price worth paying for not investing in dedicated Dutch style cycling infrastructure. If you haven't already realised the UK is a shit and dangerous place to ride a bicycle on an everyday regular basis. Period.
RP the cyclist killed in this incident and all those others who have already and WILL die this year knocked down by motons.
I'm not aware of the statistics in terms of fatalities for this time last year. Does anyone know? Whatever it was, this is a disturbing and gut wrenching start to 2015. This story needs to make national headlines. Our pathetic govt needs to be shamed into making cycling safer and forced to protect 'us' through stiffer legislation, which will enable the police and public prosecutors to hammer any motor vehicle driver who causes harm to a cyclist. Enough of this shit!
FFS, day 15 and 12 dead already!
RIP and I hope some good will come of all this!
not unless one of the poor souls was related to someone famous or in 'power'.
I know none of use really like road.cc reporting on these bad new stories but I think its important the stories dont get lost and buried in some local rag.
RIP.
I wish you were wrong but..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
That would influence whether there is a prosecution, or whether the sentence is a light slap on the wrist with a feather, or something lighter and less powerful. It won't affect anything else.
A royal prince or one of the Prime Minister's children could get killed on a bicycle and still no "good" would come of it.
The transport minister's family could all be killed by trucks while riding bicycles and still nobody at all in government would feel any impetus to support cycle safety infrastructure. And by "support", I mean REAL support, not thruppence lavished on a package shared arbitrarily by 25 cities spread over 15 years, or whatever tokenism is this month's government pittance.