Luis Rojas was listening to a 1970s power ballad when his bus fatally struck two men riding a scooter, a Sydney court has heard.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
One of the riders ended up "folded" under the tyre of a car, while the other was thrown into the air but regained consciousness long enough to remove his helmet and briefly communicate with a doctor.
Chen Guan Wei, 32, and Su-Po Hsu, 44, were both declared dead at the scene.
Rojas, 50, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of dangerous driving occasioning death following the collision in Kingsgrove in January 2019.
Footage played in the NSW District Court on Friday showed Rojas plugging a cord from his phone into the vehicle's sound system to listen to US artist Nilsson's cover of Without You in the minutes before the fatal crash.
He also repeatedly fiddled with his glasses, touched his phone and read a piece of paper while driving the empty bus just before his shift started.
Rojas, who had about 10 years of experience as a bus driver, later told police he "didn't see them until it was too late" and asked if the two scooter riders were OK, the court heard.
A witness to the crash recalled hitting something before stopping her car, getting out and finding one of the riders "folded and stuck" beneath her tyre.
"I was overwhelmed and terrified," she told the jury trial through a Mandarin Chinese interpreter.
"He wasn't moving."
Another witness, driving in the opposite direction, said the other rider was launched in the air by the collision before landing in front of him.
"I saw blood dripping down his face," the witness said.
"After a few minutes he began to moan but made no signs of communication. He was laying on the road face-first.
"I said to him 'everything will be okay, help is on the way', but he did not appear to understand."
A doctor who stopped to help said the rider who removed his helmet had difficulty breathing but managed to say his back was sore.
The doctor treated him for about 10 minutes before he saw the other rider trapped beneath the car.
"His leg was bent all the way to his chest," the witness said.
"It was evident the person under the car wouldn't survive."
In his defence opening, Rojas' lawyer Varinder Pawar said the jury would need to find a "serious breach of proper control" to find the bus driver guilty of dangerous driving occasioning death.
The trial before Judge Siobhan Herbert continues.
Australian Associated Press
