Collision impact expert describes what made Westboro bus crash so brutal [Video]

Warning: This story contains disturbing details.

The damage of the January 2019 bus crash at Ottawa’s Westboro station was so widely felt that, at one point, a Transport Canada expert speaking at an ongoing coroner’s inquest into the tragedy had to interject in her own testimony.

“Nobody walked away without any injury,” Suzanne Tylko said on Tuesday.

On Jan. 11, 2019, a packed OC Transpo double-decker slammed into a Transitway bus shelter at the west Ottawa station. Three people — Judy Booth, Bruce Thomlinson and Anja Van Beek — died in the crash. Many others were injured, triggering a flurry of lawsuits.

While the city accepted civil responsibility for the crash, the bus driver was charged with 38 counts of dangerous driving causing death or bodily harm. She was acquitted of all of them in a judge-only trial in 2021.

The inquest is hearing from a range of witnesses in the hopes of coming up with ways to prevent similar calamities.