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Driver charged over April 2014 death of cyclist at Ludgate CircusPolice tape (CC licensed by freefotouk on Flickr)

Driver charged over April 2014 death of cyclist at Ludgate Circus

Killer junction scheduled for rebuild as part of north-south cycle superhighway
by John Stevenson
Fri, Jan 30, 2015 17:11
4

A man has been charged over the death of cyclist Victor Ben Rodriguez in London last April.

John Green, 53, from Wickford, Essex was today charged with causing death by careless driving and will appear on bail at City of London Magistrates on the 12 February, a City of London Police spokesman said.

Victor Ben Rodriguez was involved in a collision with a tipper truck on Ludgate Circus on April 3, 2014, shortly before 10:00am.

London Ambulance Service pronounced the 32 year old from Spain dead at the scene.

Mr Rodriguez had come to London from Spain to learn English. He was on his way to a job interview when the collision occurred.

He was the first of two cyclists to die as a result of crashes at Ludgate Circus in 2014. On October 20 Janina Gehlau died after being crushed by a tipper truck on October 17.

Ludgate Circus is earmarked for improvement as part of the north-south 'Cycle Superhighway' recently given the go-ahead by London mayor Boris Johnson.

Cycling campaigners have pointed out that the planned segregation of cycling and motor vehicle use at this junction would make collisions such as these virtually impossible,

Victor Manuel Ben Rodriguez
Ludgate Circus
road.cc staff

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 Farelly, 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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