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Embsay - picture Chris Heaton geograph.org.ukAnti-cycling Dales councillor banned for drink driving
A Yorkshire local councillor who accused cyclists of being traffic menaces in the run up to the Tour de France has been banned from driving after being found to have almost twice the legal limit of breath alcohol.
Councillor John Andrew Quinn (Conservative) who represents the village of Embsay on Craven District Council claimed cyclists riding ahead of the Tour de France acted as “a law unto themselves”, rode through the village at 40 to 50mph and hinted they were responsible for knocking off car wing mirrors.
On June 29, Quinn stopped at the scene of a crash on Skipton Road, where a motorbike and side car had left the road, seriously injuring the rider, according to the Craven Herald.
Although Quinn was not involved in the crash, police speaking to him at the scene noticed alcohol on his breath, Skipton magistrates court heard.
Quinn tested positive for alcohol in a roadside breath test and at the police station was subsequently found to have 61 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35.
At a meeting of Craven Council’s select committee in 2013, Quinn claimed that cyclists were riding at speed through villages including Embsay and failing to stop at red lights, including at pelican crossings, and demanded to know what action police were taking against cyclists.
“They are a law unto themselves,” he said. “We have an elderly population in Embsay and we’ve had incidents where car wing mirrors have gone missing. Something needs to be done.”
Unusually for a local newspaper report, involving bicycles, the comments to the Craven Herald's article weren't full of the typical accusations of all cyclists breaking the law and how they shouldn't be on the road in the first place because they "don't pay road tax," a common misconception due to that tax being abolished in the 1930s.
Instead, the comments, including some from cyclists who appear to be neighbours of Councillor Quinn, highlighted logging trucks, cars and caravans as posing the greatest danger on Embsay's roads as well as being responsible for those broken wing mirrors, and also highlighted the imppossibility of cyclists riding through the village at between 40 and 50mph as he had claimed.
After an outcry from local cyclists, police and Craven District Council vowed to work with cycling groups.
It turns out, then, that Quinn, who admitted drink-driving, himself poses a traffic hazard. The court heard that he had been entertaining at home before driving into Skipton to fill his Landrover Freelander with fuel for a business trip the next day.
He was banned from driving for 18 months, fined £420 and ordered to pay costs of £85 and victim surcharge of £42.
His ban will be reduced by 18 weeks if he completes a drink-drivers rehabilitation course by July next year.
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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51 comments
You know there are other reasons he could have stopped other than out of compassion or his incredible first aider skills (you would guess that paramedics would have been in attendance if the police were there)?
It could be he revels so much in his own self importance that he thought he would stick his nose in and those tendencies are amplified when one is under the influence of alcohol.
At no point does it state police was there when the councillor stopped, so you're making assumptions.
He's clearly a knob for drinking and driving, and has some very strange ideas about cyclists.
But he's probably not the devil incarnate and responsible for all cycling problems ever, which some people on here are implying.
http://www.cravendc.gov.uk/article/2007/Councillor-John-Andrew-QUINN-Con...
Most noteworthy, Vice Chairman of Standards !!
He shouldn't be allowed to continue in his capacity as a councilor following this incident. It speaks volumes for his ability to make the right decisions for people in his local area.
Oops!
Drinking with friends, then filling up the tank before a long journey in the morning. It seems like it didn't occur to him that he shouldn't have been driving, even though he was nearly double the limit.
Well done to the Police - one less drink driver on the road.
Clearly if your going to accuse someone of being a law unto themselves, you should clearly be law abiding yourself. Nae Luck Baw Bag!
Yes. We Germans do have a word for that indeed. One which you people like to steal ...
Make up your own words!
A lawlessness unto himself!
Would be hilarious if he hadn't been posing such a danger to himself and others and, let's be honest, how likely is it that this is his first ever trip out behind the wheel with a few drinks onboard?
Whilst no journey can ever be "essential" enough to drink & drive, how ridiculous to drive out just to buy fuel after drinking - to me that shows either a complete disregard for others or 'above the law' self-importance, or most likely both.
A One Year Walk will do him good. Might sign him up for a few 2015 bike brochure mailings to read too.
Well thankfully that is one less motorist we cyclists have to deal with.
Brilliant. Well done N Yorks Police and maybe Mr Quinn will now be signing up to Road.cc for some sound advice on how to get about for the next year and half or so; he may struggle with insurance costs in the future so might even become a cycling convert. It is after all, a tad more difficult to get charged with being drunk in charge of a push bike .........
18 months? really?
I could sure do with some of these...
There's millions more where he came form...
I really hope this guy has a old bike in the shed...
I've left the idiot a message thanking him for adding to the evidence that vulnerable road users need protecting from selfish and reckless individuals like himself.
The Tories have demonstrated their disdain for cycling with continued reluctance to crack down on motorists like this whilst Mr Cameron had the audacity to attend and enjoy the tour de france 'as he thoroughly supports cycling and recognises the immense benefits it offers to society'. Pull the other one David.
With politicians like this what hope is there of getting road safety taken seriously?
Nah, you should be proud of it. It's your most successful language export since the hamburger!
Whilst I agree with your sentiment I think it's a litte unfair to critsise Mr. Cameron for attending the TDF. The TDF is a sporting event and doesn't really have anything to do with day-to-day cycling. If he were to attend an F1 or Moto GP race it wouldn't necesarily be indicitive of his attitude to travel by motor vehicle. I wish we could stop lumping everything and anything to do with bikes into one box. There's obviously some overlap but a lot of sporting cyclings rarely use their bikes for transport.
I don't actually think that the tories are anti-cycling per se. What they don't want is to see a change in modal share for transport in favour of the bike. They want people to continue to buy and use cars. They are also in favour of people buying any using bikes as long as it doesn't impact the dominace of the car on the roads i.e. bikes for sport and leisure and not as a primary form of transport. Something that you strap to you car in order to drive to a nice place for a bike ride.
The unit is the gram - not 'gramme'. Please consult the SI Brochure to avoid such errors in future.
Although the scientist in me agrees with you, to be fair to them - the unit of mass in the metric system was the 'gramme' and it was also the common English spelling of 'gram' (unsurprising given our language history).
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