The driver involved in a fatal bus crash had been warned several times about his driving by concerned passengers, a court was told.
Bruce Kenneth Slater, 77, of Gunbower, has been sentenced to prison time for a mini-bus crash in 2021 that killed an Echuca woman.
Slater pleaded guilty in Melbourne County Court to dangerous driving causing death and three counts of dangerous driving causing serious injury.
He was sentenced to 12 months in jail for the dangerous driving causing death charge, and a 24-month community corrections order with a supervision condition for the three dangerous driving causing serious injury charges, which will begin at the end of his prison term.
He was also disqualified from holding a licence for five years, and any existing driver’s licences were cancelled on each of the charges.
Slater was a volunteer bus driver on a trip from Gunbower through northern and north-eastern Victoria, taking a group to look at silo art.
The group of eight had travelled just under 300km that day and were heading to Colbinabbin when the fatal crash occurred at Arcadia South just before 3.30pm on May 20, 2021.
The bus travelled for about 100m with at least one side of it in the gravel on the left side of the Murchison-Violet Town Rd, before Slater hit a small tree.
He attempted to correct course by steering the mini-bus to the right, but drove across the road, into a ditch on the opposite side and then into a paddock where the mini-bus rolled at least twice, the court heard.
One of the passengers, a 40-year-old Echuca woman, died at the scene, and three other passengers were flown to Melbourne hospitals with life-threatening injuries.
Slater was also flown to hospital in Melbourne.
Judge Peter Lauritsen said before Slater drove in the gravel, there were “disturbing signs” of the quality of his driving, and passengers were concerned about his “attitude to driving” and the speed he drove at.
One passenger said Slater had “wandered” on to the gravel twice during that section of road, while another passenger said Slater had driven off on to the gravel shoulder of the road “at least 10 times” during the entire trip.
Collision reconstruction experts say the bus was travelling between 104km/h and 120km/h on the gravel shoulder of the road.
In the moments before the crash, Slater didn’t respond to several people who started yelling when he wandered into the gravel on the left side of the road, and he didn’t respond after hitting a small white post on the side of the road, before he hit the small tree.
A passenger had even asked if Slater was all right and offered to drive at one point.
Slater had “an extensive range of medical issues” for which he was prescribed a “substantial amount of medication” and had used a continuous positive airway pressure machine from 1995 for sleep apnoea.
After the crash, Slater’s CPAP machine was examined by an expert, and analysis showed that while the machine had been used daily from November 25, 2020, it was “poorly maintained” and “ineffective” due to excessive leakage of air from the mask, and it was only being used for a maximum of just over four hours each night, making it more likely he would experience “excessive sleepiness”.
Slater had experienced several medical episodes and had frequently been in and out of hospital since the offending.
He had since been living in an aged care home attached to the Cohuna hospital, and now needed a walking frame to move about.
Judge Lauritsen said Slater’s physical ability to drive seemed “severely impaired” and regardless of the five-year disqualification period, his “driving days are over”.
Although Slater was a low risk of reoffending, he had shown “no evidence of remorse”.
“You had been warned by some of your passengers, but took no notice,” Judge Lauritsen said.
“I do not know why you took no notice, one might have thought one warning would have been enough.”
Although Slater’s defence counsel, William Blake, had previously argued his client not receive the mandatory jail sentence for the dangerous driving causing death charge due to health issues, Judge Lauritsen said he had failed to prove there was an exceptional circumstance.
Judge Lauritsen said Slater’s medical issues and medicine taking could be accommodated in custody, as he considered “the health services offered in prison equal to those provided in the community”, and there were already a “significant number of prisoners in Victoria with complex and chronic health conditions”.
“Although elderly and suffering from several serious medical conditions, these will be treated as well in prison as well as they are in the community,” he said.
“You do face the possibility of dying in jail.”