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I'm so sorry and sad to bear this news.

According to this blog maintained by his friends, http://forsofo.wordpress.com/, the cyclist knocked from his bike by a lorry on the Bethnal Green Road on October 29th has died from his injuries.

From Greece, Sofoklis K moved to London to pursue a career in dance and theatre and performed as part of the London 2012 festival and with the English National Ballet. His family will repatriate him to Greece for the funeral.

He becomes the 12th cyclist to die on London's roads so far in 2012. May he rest in peace.

This happened next to my house, to say I'm sad, shaken and angry is an understatement. My heart and prayers go to his friends and to his family. Can someone help me change the name of the thread to reflect that he died, I don't know how to do it please?
[URL="http://forsofo.wordpress.com/"][/URL]

PLEASE SIGN THIS!

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In addition there is an online petition: http://tiny.cc/rh2tmw**

We are planning a day of action on** Friday 16th November in the Elephant & Castle** area when we will try to get as many petition signatures as possible.

Thank you!

Signed it, tweeted it, Facebooked it. If all the forumungers here did the same this petition would be huge in no time at all! The story of the 5 year old boy run down in front of his family on the pedestrian crossing in E&C couldn't fail to move anyone and demonstrate the need for change there.

Let me know what I can do to help on the 16th - happy to run a blog post on that day and also come down after work to help collect signatures if it's of use?

Mon 19 Nov - CAN Mezzanine, 32 - 36 Loman Street, London, SE1 0EH. All welcome.

What time missmouse? The kind of link up you're organising is so essential IMO and something we need to see much much more of.

Incidentally, if you're interested in public health do try and get on to the masterclass at City Hall. Lucy, who will be chairing it, is amazing - she totally "gets" all of the issues and is so plugged in to her field its astonishing.

Back on the "cycle campaigning" tack..
A quick toot of my own trumpet; I'm giving the next Street Talk by the Movement for Liveable London and I'd really like to have as many London cycle campaigners there, as it is cycle campaigning which I will be talking about!

Here's what the Movement for Liveable London website has to say:
"Mark Ames has been writing about cycling for four years and in that time has seen everything from tens of thousands of cyclists on the streets in demonstrations to an old aged pensioner riding the notorious Elephant and Castle roundabout. He’ll chart the highs and lows of cycle advocacy in London and propose new ideas as to what really needs to be done to achieve a real cycling revolution in London, and more importantly who needs to ask for it. Finally, Mark will put forward the idea that keeping cyclists safe and designing the built environment go hand in hand, and, when done well are a true indicator of an equal city."
http://movementforliveablelondon.com/2012/10/11/novembers-street-talk-2/
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It's on next Tuesday November 6th in the upstairs bar at the Yorkshire Grey pub (food and drink from 6PM, talk at 7PM followed by Q&A)

I'm going to be talking about campaigning in the Web 2.0 world, participatory planning, creating engaging campaigns and also my ideas for shifting the political will road block when it comes to more funding for cycling. Hopefully it will help to spark a bigger conversation about "where do we go from here" and forge some new alliances.

Also, for those who are interested, the Movement for Liveable London are holding a public health masterclass at the end of November which I think a lot of campaigners might be interested in:
http://movementforliveablelondon.com/2012/10/17/masterclass-on-transport-and-health/

Advert over. Hope to see some of you there!

http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/raf-pilot-teach-cyclists/ - I thought that this was a really quite interesting article. I'm not sure where in the forum it should go, but thought that people in this tread would be interested

This should be compulsory reading for all road users. I've always thought one of the failings of the driving test is that it never talks about the limitations and failings of humans. It's a bit "Here's the keys, off you go, you're invincible!" The RAF Fighter Pilot article is superb.

Stay strong mpanana and know that lots of people on here are holding your friend in their thoughts and wishing fervently for his recovery. Please do let us know if there's anything I can do to help - I live in the area so if you are looking for witnesses I'd be happy to help put up posters or talk to local shopkeepers or anything really. Just say the word!

Wow, that sounds about as serious as it could be.

Thanks for the update Danny R, keep strong yourself and we'll all be thinking of your colleague and hoping for the best.

Just giving this a very gentle bump to see if anyone has any concrete news of the rider? I don't know them, but living just round the corner from the collision site it's made me feel concerned.

Am surprised the road is still closed. Don't want to read too much into that, but keeping everything crossed for the rider.

There was a collision between an HGV and a cyclist on the Bethnal Green Road this morning around 7ish.

When I passed by about 7.50AM there were several police cars on the scene and the road had been closed to traffic going westbound. The incident happened on the stretch of road between Bethnal Green tube station and the Shakespeare pub. The road here is split in two by a central island, it looked to me like a cyclist had got caught between a parked Volvo car by an overtaking Bywaters Recycling lorry cab (which was unattached to a trailer).

The bike was still on the ground and all of the cyclist's possessions strewn all over the road when I got there, with Police taking photos and making reports. There was an ambulance with its lights on parked alongside, but no sign of the rider.

I live just off the road and always feel sketchy cycling through the pinch point there because traffic tries to push past even if you ride wide.

Really hoping that the rider is okay and everyone involved comes out unhurt. Any further info gratefully received.

Sorry it took me ages to upload my pics but they're here now with Chan's video (great video Chan, love the victory dances)

http://ibikelondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/london-bike-polo-open-highlights.html

Thanks for a great day in the sunshine to everyone who helped set this up and organise. It was great!

Weather forecast is looking dry in the morning with rain from the east from 2pm/3pm onwards. Bring your waterproofs but pray for sunshine! Have a feeling tomorrow's ride is going to be HUGE. Am going to be in the Jeep sound system at the start of the ride so give me a wave!!

I totally appreciate that it is hard to fund and to organise grass roots level events, and I know the entire velodrome runs on good will and time in kind alone - good will and time in kind I have given myself freely in the past.

I just thought it was a lot of money for a standing event in the open air for what is supposed to be as much a community facility as it is an elite venue.

A small grump, I'll admit, and maybe my perception of cost is bit warped. Either way I'm grateful to all the people involved in helping to organise the day and indeed am happy that the Good Friday meet is even back in London at Herne Hill at all.

Am I really reading this right? Tickets to go and watch, have a hotdog and mooch over the Bike Jumble are £12 per person?! Is it me or is that a bit steep? Was going to take my other half and my parents who've never watched Track before which would come to nearly £50 - that's like top class London tourist attraction prices.

http://www.bristowevents.co.uk/goodfridaytickets.html

Grrrr, grumble grumble, grrrrr etc

1. Sonny
   
2. CelesteGreen
   
3. Jakebrown
   
4. Jacqui
   
5. ian
   
6. pom (mrs conker)
   
7. bodieanddoyle - I'm going to dress up as Rick James.... bitch!
   
8. apolloxl
   
9. almac68 - going as sly and the family stone .. biatches!!
   
10. somebody.
    
11. photoben - If you see a photographer with a forum cap on give me a wave!
    
12. Hairnet
    
13. little white bike
    
14. markbikeslondon
    
    

I'm going to be at this. I think all the big protest rides that have happened this year - Blackfriars Bridge, the Tour du Danger, the pedal on parliament back in February - all of them have been building up to this. To have tens of thousands of kids, families, grans out on their bikes calling for safer streets just 3 days before the Mayoral election is going to huge. I'm in with sticks. See you there!

Here's my write up;
http://ibikelondon.blogspot.com/2012/02/huge-thanks-to-all-2000-of-you-now-its.html
Thanks again to everyone who came. I agree we should buy Miss Mouse a megaphone - it came naturally to her!

Thanks everyone for coming! In fairness it was cold wet and dark - even I had a fleuro vest on for once.

What a great turn out, bigger than we'd ever expected. My fave character of the night was an older lady with a sign on the front of her bike saying "Granny wants to cycle too" Rock n fucking roll baby!

Awesome night, had a great time. Thanks to everyone on here who marshalled, including miss mouse, the infamous ed scoble and a couple of others too.

Great pictures Jack & Ben

We're not made of sugar, we won't melt (although I believe the rain will pass by during the afternoon, hopefully clearing for the evening)

I've heard about this on the radio twice already today - have a feeling it will be quite big so giving this a big ol' BUMP for those who haven't seen it yet!

@Pony Are your pics on Flickr to view somewhere? That shot is awesome.

the only slight criticism i have of the venue is..the urinals are too low..

And there was only one hand dryer! Have never lined up to dry my hands before...

I think when they designed it (must have been 5 years ago?) LOCOG were terrified of being lumped with "white elephant" venues that no one used and cost a fortune to keep. I think 6K is a reasonable crowd for a venue post Games in that a lot of the interest will fade away - it's just a shame that during the Games proper so many of those 6K tickets will be allocated to suits.

I wonder if during the Games they will have a returns box office like they do at Wimbledon so that when the suits get bored and leave half way through someone who actually gives a damn and is on site can slip in to their seats?

Have just uploaded my pics and a little write up of the Friday PM session:
http://ibikelondon.blogspot.com/2012/02/trip-to-track.html

Loved the atmosphere on Friday night, loved some of the riding, loved the Ugandan Hackney CC rider, loved the venue. Really liked the "promenade" that went all the way around the track; was able to stand over the finish line for ages, and stand over the banking too, as well as hook up with some mates for a very price beer. The lights, which I'm guessing have been rigged for high def TV, really take it out of you. Mark's top tip: take a cycling cap and don't wear too much.

Wish I'd got Olympic tickets now, although I reckon there were probably more people in the crowd who follow cycling at least to some extent than there will be during the Games when all the gravy trainers are in there with their free tickets. So the atmosphere was probably more electric for this than it will be for the Games.

There is a bookyface invite for this now too for those of you who like that sort of thing:

http://www.facebook.com/events/233409000086836/

You can invite your friends with it, just don't ask me how 'cos I'm not actually sure how.

Brompton have emailed all their subsribers about it and Evans Cycles have tweeted about it - should be quite a fun turn out. Always nice to see lots of different cyclists out together.

Praying for nice weather!

Correct me if I'm wrong Mark but I think you've missed the point rhb. We do, of course, want safer roads on which many more cyclists can and will cycle as equally important road users. In order for this to happen significant changes need to be made at government level which is why we have decided to do a flashride next week. No one is suggesting this ride should be indicative of the kind of cycling we want to see on a daily basis going forward but it's a demonstration, a sure way of showing our presence. A strung out thin long line of 300+ cyclists isn't really going to say much.

That's the long and short of it, yep. The fact that the ride on Wednesday is being marshalled has nothing to do with how we'd like our streets to look in the future and all to do with keeping a disparate group of cyclists in one pack intact and dare I even suggest it all in one place to ensure any snaps for the media are suitably dramatic :)

It will be fun, come!

Why does number 2 just sound so wrong? Woop...

1. Poots - woo hoo! No.1!
   
2. markbikeslondon
   
   

Any other takers?