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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8 comments
All we definitely know is that the environment mixes people on bikes and fast-moving motor vehicles. Stop doing that, and you stop this collision from ever happening, however the people are behaving (and we know that sometimes people do things wrong, or make mistakes. We also know there is no way of preventing this).
Thanks a bunch guys; I ride to work at this time of day, work shifts and believe it or not I am not a moron and I have two sets of lights front and rear. Unbelievable attitude
I also used to work shifts and at that time of the morning it is always odd. A surprisingly large number of cyclists with no lights, drivers/cyclists half asleep/not paying enough attention to their surroundings, People still in a rush to get to work, then throw in HGVs trying to do deliveries before the morning rush begins.
As said it is a shit situation and I would suggest not pinning the blame on anyone until far more is known. Traffic engineers really need to consider PROPER cycle provision when your dealing with dual carriageway junctions.
At this point I am going to hold judgement, 5:30? shift worker?, possibly dark, certainly half-light, major dual carriageway junction. cyclist maybe no lights maybe a distracted driver, etc I am sure it will come out what happened.
It is a shit situation for everyone.
Why speculate ? Lets just wait.
Condolences to the family.
Why speculate ? Lets just wait.
Condolences to the family.
5:35, still before sunrise there that day... starting to get light, but lights legally required.
Poor bloke, and poor student. Ad UKIP want to let any old nutter drive HGVs?