The bike rider killed on Monday when he was hit by a truck on London’s High Holborn interchange has been named as 54-year-old Alan Neve.
Alan was riding to work on Monday morning when he was killed. According to a waiter from a nearby restaurant who gave him CPR after the crash, it appeared Alan had been hit by the lorry as it drove straight toward a green light.
Alan’s cousin Jonathan yesterday told the Evening Standard his family was, “absolutely devastated by Alan’s death. Alan’s parents are heartbroken, he was their first born son and the apple of their eye. He was kind, compassionate, loving and affable.
“We had only got back in touch and had plans to spend time together in the future but now that is all lost.”
Alan worked for PRS for Music, the organisation that protects musician’s copyrights and collects performance fees, and was on his way the organisation’s office in Berners Street, near Goodge Street when he was killed.
Alan’s cousin Jonathan said: “Music was Alan’s life and he loved his job at the PRS. He was a wonderful person and a joy to be around. He will be missed terribly by all who knew him.”
Robert Ashcroft, chief executive of PRS for Music, said: “Alan was a dedicated and popular employee, having been with the company for 30 years. We are all in shock at this tragic news and our thoughts are with his family at this time.
“We have lost a colleague and a friend, Alan will be deeply missed.”
At yesterday’s protest ride, London Cycling Campaign chief executive Ashok Sinha reiterated the organisation’s demand that London’s road network be made safer for bike riders.
He said: “Boris Johnson promised us a better London for cyclists at the last mayoral elections but so far we’ve just seen delay after delay.
“Cycling is on the increase in London and if something isn’t done soon then so will the number of cyclists dying on our roads. The last few weeks has shown that something needs to happen fast.”
Acknowledged by the Telegraph as a leading cycling journalist, John Stevenson 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 editor 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 and these days he lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.