Black box camera footage and data is being used to piece together the story behind a fatal collision between an aged care services minibus and a fuel tanker at Yallah last year. The crash claimed the life of 78-year-old Margaret Russell. Michael Ryan, 65, a volunteer minibus driver for Warrigal Care, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of dangerous driving occasioning Ms Russell’s death. Several Warrigal Aged Care Services workers gave evidence at day two of Ryan’s trial in Wollongong District Court on Tuesday, including carer Melissa Williams, who was seated on one of the bus’s back seats as it travelled northward on the M1 about 11.55am January, 25. She recalled yelling to the driver – “no, no, no!” – when she noticed the bus veering from the right lane to the left, as if to overtake. “I noticed that we were beside the truck … a fuel tanker,” she said. She said the bus returned safely to its lane, only to again veer left, moments later. “The bus was most of the way past, but not completely. “Then I yelled out again – “no, no, no!” – and it was too late. We clipped the truck.” Ms Williams and her co-worker, Lynne Zwickl, climbed free of the wreckage and began helping elderly clients from the bus. Ms Zwickl told the jury she had been on the phone to a co-worker who was not far behind, travelling in a separate Warrigal Care bus to the same picnic at Dapto, when she heard Ms Williams say “no, no, no”, indicating the bus’s first errant move to the left. Ms Zwickl says she heard Mr Williams say either “there’s not enough room” or “he’s hasn’t got enough room”. She agreed noises on the bus – of conversation, and the squeaking components of a wheelchair hoist – could make it difficult to be heard. The jury heard the workers had not taken their usual seats, with one immediately behind the driver, because when they got on the bus a client had already taken that seat. Ms Zwickl gave evidence there was an overlap of “at least 4-5 foot” between the back of the bus and the front of the truck when the bus attempted to overtake. Dashcam and black box footage played to the jury shows the fuel truck driver’s face, his eyes continually scanning his rear vision mirrors, after the truck passed through a large roundabout at Albion Park and continued northward. Data collected from the black box showed it took one minute and 59 seconds for the truck to accelerate to 78kmh from a near-static position at the roundabout. The court heard it was laden with highly flammable ethanol and weighed 57 tonnes (an average sedan weighs about two tonnes), and was travelling on an uphill incline at this point. At the wheel was Tony Forshaw, who was transporting the fuel from Bomaderry to Port Botany for Ron Finemore Transport. Mr Forshaw told the jury the truck gained speed slowly as it travelled up the incline, then reached a crest. It took just 16 seconds to then accelerate to 98kmh – its speed at time of impact. Under cross examination Mr Forshaw said his foot “had come off the throttle” – reducing his speed by 1km, according to black box data – but he had not braked until after impact. He told the jury he did not feel the need to brake when the bus initially veered left, because he attributed the bus’s movement to an “error of judgement”. He said he did not see the bus’s indicator light up, but that this may have occurred in a blind spot. The court heard Ms Russell was positioned in a window seat on the right hand side of the bus, either three or four seats behind the driver. The trial continues.
