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Coughing fit key to bus tragedy?

Ailsa Cranna
15/ 5/2008

THE driver of the bus which knocked down and killed popular lollipop lady Stephanie Davies had been distracted by a coughing fit just before the fatal collision, a court heard.

Stephen Wilson’s coughing was so bad passengers on his bus had remarked on it, said prosecutor Adrian Farrow at Minshull Street Crown Court.

Mr Farrow said: "We say there was a gross lack of concentration or distraction on the part of the driver. It must have been obvious to him that it was unsafe to drive in that manner."

The jury was shown 17 seconds of video footage from one of three security cameras on the vehicle which showed the Arriva bus cross Liverpool Street diagonally on Monday, September 10, 2006, narrowly missing an oncoming car, before colliding with safety railings and traffic signals outside Seedley Primary School, on Liverpool Street where Mrs Davies was on patrol.

Mrs Davies, 35, was dragged beneath the single-decker bus and died at the scene.

Mr Farrow said the coughing fit had been severe enough to cause comment among passengers on the bus, en route from Brookhouse, in Eccles, to Manchester, and that instead of driving normally the vehicle had travelled ‘inevitably and relentlessly’ across the carriageway.

He said: "There was no attempt to brake, to steer, or get back on the right side of the road, and there was no attempt, it seems, to avoid the collision."

The court heard that Mr Wilson, 57, of Coniston Grove, Little Hulton, who pleads not guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, was described by witnesses as being a cheerful driver who exchanged pleasantries with everyone getting on and off the bus.

He told police he could remember leaving a bus stop further down the road, and remembered seeing the lollipop lady, but recalled nothing of what happened as he travelled the short distance of 135 metres in between.

But, said Mr Farrow, skid marks on the road show he had, in fact, made a last-minute attempt to apply the brakes, despite his having no recollection of doing so.

PC John Griffin, an investigator with GMP’s Collision Reconstruction Unit, said the tell-tale marks showed that the brakes must have been operated because the rear wheels locked.

He told the court: "You have to put your foot down on the brake to do that, and it would require considerable force. It’s quite a sudden and severe pedal pressure."

PC Griffin told the jury of 11 women and one man, that tests on the vehicle showed no defects that could have contributed to the tragic accident.

Mr Farrow told the jury they would hear suggestions from the defence that the driver had suffered from an altered state of consciousness or a ‘micro-sleep’ and had not been responsible for the progress of the vehicle.

But he said: "We would say that explanation is unbelievable, and does not fit with evidence that witnesses have given."

Stephanie Davies’ husband, Martin, has been in court to hear witnesses describe how he was one of the first on the scene, as he had been on the way to collect their daughter Anna, then five, a pupil at Seedley Primary.

The family live yards away from the school, in Wychbury Street.

The court heard how when he heard the crash, which he described like ‘an almighty noise like a building falling down’, he ran towards the back of the bus shouting hysterically ‘She’s my wife... no, no.’

Proceeding