The driver of a bus which ran over an Oxford University student was distracted by an off-duty colleague chatting to him, a court was told yesterday.

Oxford Bus Company driver Paul Willis appeared at Wantage Magistrates' Court charged with careless driving and speaking to someone while the vehicle was in motion, following the death of Emilie Harris.

His colleague Henry Stuart is charged with breaching public service regulations by speaking to a driver while a vehicle was in motion.

Prosecutor Jane Brady said Miss Harris, a St Catherine's College undergraduate, was cycling along Cowley Road towards Cowley just before 3.30pm on May 26, 2004, when she was run over by the bus being driven by Willis.

Three passengers on the bus said they saw Willis and Stuart chatting between the Queen's Lane stop in High Street, where Stuart got on, and the Elm Tree pub in Cowley Road, where the crash happened.

Ms Brady said because he had been chatting to Stuart, Willis had been distracted. She added: "Mr Willis failed to appreciate fully the obvious hazards ahead of him in the form of the cyclist and other vehicles. This was a bottleneck situation where Mr Willis was driving too fast and too close to Emilie."

Off-duty police officer Ben Turner, a passenger in a car heading in the opposite direction, said he saw Miss Harris cycling ahead of the bus before she disappeared under its front wheels. He said: "The front and rear wheels went over her."

Miss Brady added: "Emilie was the road user ahead - she took priority with the speed the bus was going at and the bottleneck situation ahead. Once Emilie did get into difficulties ,there was no time or space for her to fall off and for Mr Willis to avoid hitting her. She could not be overtaken with an adequate safety margin."

Ruth Anderson, who was sitting at the front left of the bus, said: "I recall the two bus drivers talking to each other at some point when the bus was in motion."

Fellow passenger Emma Price, sitting behind the driver, added: "They were talking to each other and at that point, the bus was in motion."

In police interviews, Willis, 49, of Witney Road, Long Hanborough, said he had asked Stuart for some change as he was queuing in traffic to get on to The Plain roundabout.

Asked whether he felt he should have pulled back instead of going past the cyclist, he replied: "In hindsight, yes."

In his interview, 53-year-old Stuart, of Mather Road, Barton, Oxford, said he stood next to Willis while he got change out, handed it to Willis and then stood back out of the way.

Referring to the accident, he said: "It was not just a wobble, it was as if someone had put a stick in her rear wheel. Then her arm came up and she came off the bike."

Both men deny the charges. The trial continues.