A teenage girl says she sometimes wished she had died after being flung from a school bus when a truck ploughed into it on the way to a camp.

The girl was 15 when Brett Michael Russell crashed his truck into the bus carrying dozens of Loreto College students from Ballarat to Melbourne Airport for a once-in-a-lifetime NASA camp in the United States in September 2022.

On Wednesday, Russell, 63, pleaded guilty to a dozen charges, including 10 counts of negligently causing serious injury and two of conduct endangering persons.

He admitted to injuring 27 students, four school employees and the bus driver, and endangering three roadside workers near the scene of the crash.

The court was told Russell knew the brakes on his truck and the two trailers he was towing were faulty.

The girl, who c

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