The horrors of a vehicle accident revisited this family once again

Floris Steenkamp

Vehicle accidents continue to imprint a devastating pattern of loss and suffering on innocent Namibians.

Walvis Bay is no exception. The recent accident in which the well-known former international fashion model, modeling school owner and beautician, Lizelle Cordier, was seriously injured is a stark re-minder of the immensely negative impact vehicle accidents leave on the lives of thousands of Namibians every day, week and month of every year.
Cordier lost her sister, Connie Olivier, in March 2016 also in a vehicle accident. Olivier was returning home to Langstrand on the evening of 16 March 2017 when her vehicle collided with a truck trailer some 3km out of the harbour town on the B2 coastal road. Olivier was in the prime of her life and had so much more to offer to her family, friends and the wider community of Walvis Bay.
A vehicle accident put an abrupt end to that.
“I am thankful. I am out of hospital and is making a recovery at home with my family around me. I am blessed because my daughter and friend who were with me in the vehicle, were only slightly injured.
Things could have been so horribly different if it was not for the Lord who kept us safe”, said Cordier.
Cordier urged people to take a fresh look at road accidents. She urged the municipality of Walvis Bay in particular to revisit road markings and road signs across town. At the particular spot where the accident recently occurred, there were no road markings to warn the driver a stop intersection was approaching. Plants also obscured the stop sign.
The driver of the vehicle lives elsewhere and is not familiar with Walvis Bay’s street system. Without the road markings or the stop sign visible, chances for an accident became almost a certainty.
“Vehicle accidents are not only a reality on our national roads. In a town or city we tend to think the chances of vehicle accidents are less than on the open road. It is not the case.
Road safety is a dangerous phenomenon we have to rethink every day. It is a commitment each of us have to make every day. It is a commitment to follow traffic rules to the last letter and to be considerate of every other road user when we get behind the steering wheel.
Note: Cordier did not want to comment on the full details of the vehicle accident in Walvis Bay’s Peter Mushiange Street last week, as this is currently the subject of possible civil litigation.
On top right picture: Cordier in happier days with her sister, the late Connie Olivier (also on the picture below left).