By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Three local youth are lucky to have walked away from a serious car accident largely unscathed on the first day of the new year after the driver lost control, causing the car to hit an embankment and flip over on Meadows Drive in Oliver.
Rob Graham, spokesperson for the Oliver Fire Department (OFD) told the Times Chronicle that the OFD responded to a call out around 9 p.m. on January 1, indicating a motor vehicle incident on Meadows Drive.
Upon arriving at the scene, it was determined to be a single vehicle accident involving a car that had rolled over on its roof.
The three occupants of the vehicle were able to safely extricate themselves from the vehicle with no apparent injuries and were assessed at the scene by BC Ambulance paramedics.
Graham said the accident appeared to have been caused by high speed and slick roads after a light dusting of snow. Noting the occupants, including the driver, were younger, he chalked up the accident to carelessness.
“Where they hit, there’s a hillside there, and when they hit that hillside at a high rate of speed, I guess that’s where they began to roll over, and that’s where their vehicle came to sit,” Graham said.
He added, “thankfully it was on that side of the road versus the opposite side where there is some housing, and it could have been possibly more tragic if they had gone into a house or some yards or something like that. So silver lining, I guess,” he added.
He wasn’t able to comment whether alcohol was involved, and the Times Chronicle was unable to confirm with the RCMP prior to press time.
The “silver lining” to the accident is that the car didn’t veer off the opposite side of the road, which could have resulted in the car crashing into utility poles and/or houses. Nicole Kriesel photo
On social media local resident Nicole Kriesel posted an impassioned plea for parents to talk to their children about driving safety.
Kriesel is also well known to many in the community through her job as a Paramedic with BC Ambulance Service, a role that has likely given her more than her fair share of experience dealing with the aftermath of vehicle accidents.
Kriesel emphasized to the Times Chronicle that her post was in no way an official comment related to her work, but instead her own personal thoughts on the matter, as she knows one of the teens involved.
“Three teenage boys – driving around, speeding and over-passengering, skid out of control in the light snowfall, and flipped the car on flat ground. Look at the car…. Thankfully, and by the grace of the universe, all three crawled out with minor injuries,” she said.
Noting that the 2026 grad class could have been missing a few graduates this year, she highlighted how “extremely lucky” they were. “If it [the car] had gone the other way, it would have been into a pole,” she observes.
While rules for new drivers are aimed at preventing or at least reducing accidents amongst young drivers, Kriesel notes that the reality is that ‘kids will be kids’.
“Kids can get distracted. Kids can get ramped up with other kids in the car. Kids can be influenced to do things they shouldn’t. Kids are inexperienced. The simplicity of not understanding how to correct a skid, combined with speed, caused this,” she says.
Parents have a key role in inculcating safe and responsible driving, she says.
“We live in a small town, everyone knows everyone. We sit on the benches together watching these kids play sports. We don’t need an empty spot on the bench because we lose one, or two, or three.
“So, again, please, talk to your kids. Any kid who allows extra kids or who gets into a car as an “over passenger” is only promoting this. Do we really want to put that kind of weight on them?
“It’s our job as parents to guide them. Yes, accidents happen, but they’ll happen less if we keep the odds down.”
