Hong Kong - A coach driver who killed 19 passengers on a church outing when he crashed in Hong Kong was Friday jailed for three years and four months.

Hung Ling-kwok, 33, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death following the accident last year in which his tour bus went out of control on a hill and rolled over.

Hung was speeding at the time and using his brake to control the coach as it came down a steep hill towards a roundabout, Hong Kong's District Court was told.

The judge described the accident near the seaside resort of Sai Kung as the worst of its kind and said Hung was lucky to be prosecuted under an old law carrying a maximum jail term of five years.

Hung begged the families of the victims for forgiveness at his court hearing and said he wished he had died in the crash.

The coach, carrying mostly elderly people to a May Day church service, lost control and crashed at a roundabout at the end of a dual carriageway.

The bus slammed into a crash barrier, and its roof caved in as it rolled over, crushing and trapping passengers on board. It took firefighters three hours to cut the victims and survivors free.

The death toll was the worst in any single road accident in Hong Kong since 2003 when 21 people died after a double-decker bus was shunted off the edge of a
30-metre-high bridge by a truck. (dpa)