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Driver fired after tweeting about hitting cyclistThe tweet that led to a driver getting sacked.png

Driver fired after tweeting about hitting cyclist

"We will take action against those who make such claims" say police...
by John Stevenson
Thu, Apr 23, 2015 11:42
16

A motorist who tweeted that she had hit a cyclist on her way to work has been sacked, despite the rider involved not making a complaint.

On March 22, a Twitter user with the handle @_hxrleyquinn posted: "I just knocked a cyclist off his bike with my wing mirror I was driving like 10mph I didn't stop coz he got up?"

Twitter's cycling community reacted strongly, urging police forces to track down the tweeter and have a word.

The user subsequently changed her Twitter handle and deleted the tweet, but not before her name and employer had been identified from her own tweets, and complaints made to her employer.

Yesterday Surrey Roads Police tweeted:

However, as with some previous similar cases, no rider has come forward to complain.

Surrey Roads Police added:

Twitter
Surrey Police
hit and run
John Stevenson

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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