DECEMBER 22, 2014, 2.29pm, Glasgow City Centre.

Bin lorry driver Harry Clarke is making his way towards Queen Street having picked up rubbish on his route known as the "middle ground".

He is about to black out at the wheel. His bin lorry will plough into crowds of Christmas shoppers, killing six.

Jacqueline Morton, 51, wouldn't ordinarily have been on Queen Street at this time.

But the devoted "Grannie" had finished work, at the HMRC offices on Cochrane Street, early to pick up her two young grand daughters.

She called them her "little princesses".

Gillian Margaret Ewing, 52, lived in Edinburgh but had travelled to Glasgow to replace a lost ring of sentimental value at a city jewellers.

She and her daughter Lucy were walking along Queen Street, side-by-side, to catch the train home.

Stephenie Catherine Tait, 29, a dedicated primary school teacher at St Philomena's Primary School in Robroyston, was Christmas shopping with her partner.

She stopped to withdraw cash from the Virgin Money bank machine but it was busy, so she joined a queue.

Erin Paula McQuade, 18, a first year student at Glasgow University, was Christmas shopping along with her grandparents Jack, 68, and Lorraine Sweeney, 69.

After having lunch together, they all walked onto Queen Street.

Within minutes all six would be dead and many more injured as the bustling city centre was thrown into carnage.

They were all in that street, standing where they were, for different reasons.

But a cruel series of events, which started years earlier, led to their deaths.

In 2010, Harry Clarke lied to a doctor after he’d blacked out while driving a bus in his previous job, instead saying he fainted in a hot canteen.

The DVLA was never informed and he continued to drive.

A FAI into the tragedy heard that a number of things could have happened which may have led to his licence being revoked, or the black out being further investigated.

It was also accepted that, had Mr Clarke's sickness and disciplinary record with First Bus been fully disclosed, he would not have been offered a job with Glasgow city Council - initially driving a school bus for children with additional needs.

Therefore he would not have been offered a promotion driving bin lorries, and would not have been on the road on this fateful day.

And perhaps, having taken the job driving 26-tonne bin lorries on a daily basis, Harry Clarke might have been minded himself tell the DVLA about his black out history - as suggested by Sheriff John Beckett QC in his FAI determination who said he instead "lied repeatedly to keep his jobs".

We’ll never know.

But the cruelness of those missed opportunities, the repeated lies and that denial of a recurring medical problem put him in the driving seat that day.

And, as he drove up Queen Street and passed the junction with Ingram Street he went, in his words, "out like a light switch" as the massive truck veered to the left and mounted the pavement.

What happened in the next 19 seconds has been well documented.

The lorry accelerated north, towards George Square.

Jack and Lorraine Sweeney and their granddaughter Erin were hit first followed by Stephenie Tait and Gillian Ewing and then Jacqueline Morton.

The lorry continued towards Queen Street Station finally coming a stop when it collided with the side of the Millennium Hotel.

The six victims all died on the street that day, some in front of their loved ones.

A further 17 people suffered injuries after also being hit by the lorry or the debris sent hurtling through the air by the runaway truck.

On top of the physical injuries, there are psychological scars that, a year later, are still unhealed. Families have been shattered as they struggle to come to terms with the horror of that day.

Why was Clarke’s allowed to drive? Why did the blackout happen on that particular street at that particularly busy time of year and day?

Why did it not happen straight after he left the depot? He might only have struck a wall of ran into a ditch.

For every question of fate there will be many others who could have been there at that time but weren’t.

It could have been you, me or someone else we know.