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Ghost bike placed at vigil for Akis Kollaros Ghost bike at vigil for Akis Kollaros (©Tom Kearney)

Ghost bike placed at vigil for Akis Kollaros

Music producer killed in lorry crash remembered
by John Stevenson
Tue, Feb 10, 2015 14:01
3

An estimated 2-300 people turned out last night for a vigil and die-in to commemorate cyclist Akis Kollaros who died after a collision with a tipper truck in East London on February 2.

Coordinated by campaign group Stop Killing Cyclists, the vigil included the placing of a ghost bike near the spot where Akis died, and speakers including Tom Kearney who was hit by a bus in 2009 and ended up in a coma.

He said: “It is so important to remember and honour these people and to inspire us to change the conditions so no more of these have to take place.”


Akis Kollaros (Source: GoFundMe)

Kearney called on London's traffic authorities and mayor Boris Johnson to take action to reduce road danger to vulnerable road users.

He said: "Boris you can’t ignore us. We’re not dead You can see us. You can hear us. You can remember us. Stop the Killing."

A 34-year-old originally from Greec, Akis Kollaros was a music producer and sound engineer, and a member of the London Dynamo cycling club. The driver of the lorry has helped police with their enquiries, but no arrests have been made.

Lorries of any description make up just 4 per cent of London's traffic, but account for around half of cyclist deaths in the city.

Among those fatalities, tipper trucks are by far the most common type of lorry involved.

In September, London's Safer Lorries Scheme will ban HGVs without cyclist safety equipment from the capital.

Stop Killing Cyclists
Fatality
Akis Kollaros
2015 fatality
John Stevenson

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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