Tipper truck driver who killed cyclist Alan Neve fails in appeal against sentence

Barry Meyer, the tipper truck driver jailed for three and a half years last April after admitting causing the death by careless driving and while unlicensed and uninsured of London cyclist Alan Neve, has failed in his appeal against his sentence.

Mr Neve had been riding his bike from his home in Poplar to his work at PRS Music in Fitzrovia in July 2013 when he was dragged underneath a tipper truck being driven by Meyer.

Appeal Judge William Davis upheld the original sentence yesterday, reports the East London Advertiser.

Rejecting Meyer’s appeal against his jail sentence, the judge said: “He didn’t pay any attention to other people on the road, in particular the cyclist.

“It’s clear Mr Neve was in full view of Meyer and drove straight over him.”

Noting that it was “a bad case of careless driving that caused death,” he added that the case had a number of aggravating factors.

As we reported at the time of the original trial, where Meyer pleaded guilty, those included that he was uninsured, did not have a valid licence for the type of vehicle he was driving, went through a red light and had a string of convictions for motoring offences.

He had been banned from driving five times and had two convictions for drink-driving.

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The judge presiding over his trial last year, Daniel Worsley, said Meyer had "a sustained history of driving offences showing wretched disregard for the safety of road users."

In June 2015, Traffic Commissioner for London Nick Denton imposed an indefinite ban on Alan and Colin Drummond, directors of the company Meyer was driving for, from operating a haulage business.

He said they had indirectly caused Mr Neve’s death "by their own failure to fulfil one of the most basic responsibilities of an operator or transport manager – to ensure that a driver of one of their HGVs was qualified to drive it."

> Freight firm bosses banned