Yesterday's extraordinary events began and ended at the Dualway bus depot in Rathcoole. The bus was driven away from the depot by one of the company's drivers early yesterday morning.
It crashed at the depot when it returned there in the early afternoon following chaotic scenes during which it collided with several other vehicles as he drove through the Dublin suburbs.
A woman was killed in one of the collisions.
Up to 30 Garda vehicles were involved in efforts to force the driver to stop as the bus careered along suburban roads.
The cream-coloured 53-seater luxury coach finally came to a standstill in the Dualway depot, its back wheels deflated and its front wheels perched over a grass verge surrounding the yard. Gardaí said it stopped at about 1.30pm, after which one man was arrested.
The entrance to the depot, at Kilteel Road, Rathcoole, was sealed off while Garda technical experts and detectives came and went throughout the day. Gardaí moved to restrict access to surrounding fields and farmland. Other than this there were few tell-tale signs of what had taken place. But anyone driving along the Naas dual carriageway to the yard yesterday could see only too clearly the destruction caused by the coach. Traffic was reduced to a single lane, the Naas Road at Bluebell was closed for a large part of the day, and a significant portion of the Luas red line was disrupted.
Witnesses to the events around the Bluebell area described seeing motorists getting out of their cars and waving their arms in an attempt to warn other motorists of the advancing bus.
One woman told RTÉ she had only just escaped from her car before the coach slammed into it.
"I jumped out and just as I got around the back of the car, the bus came along and went right into the passenger side. We were in the third car. The lady in the fifth car was killed," she said.
Another male witness described the scene of the crash as "carnage".
"Basically he ploughed through everybody. It was just manic," he said. "The lady behind me, she got out of her car and she collapsed."
One man also described seeing the bus approaching his car.
"Cars were trying to reverse up onto the kerb. I tried to reverse as well and I reversed into another lady . . . Luckily I did reverse because he barely scraped off me," he said.
"Just right in front of me I saw a lady being flung. It was just a horrible scene, the whole thing.
"I was just very lucky."
All inbound traffic on the Naas Road was diverted at a number of junctions throughout yesterday, with inbound traffic approaching via the N7 diverted to the Longmile Road towards the city.
By yesterday evening, AA Roadwatch reported that traffic on the Naas Road was moving well, with many motorists heeding Garda advice to use the M50 to access the city.