The co-founder of a biking nurse group providing in-home care to patients was run over in a busy road junction in Schaerbeek, marking the second time she is hit by a vehicle while cycling in Brussels.
Nurse Flora Billiouw was run over by a delivery truck on Schaerbeek's Chaussée de Haecht, where a 28-year-old journalist was killed by a speeding driver in 2017.
"The Chaussée de Haecht adds one more victim to its count today," Billiouw wrote in a Facebook post. "How many more victims must there be?" she added.
The 30-year-old nurse said a delivery truck was trying to push her off the road and caused her to lose her balance and crash against parked cars.
"I was driving at 25 km/h — I don't what to know how fast he was driving," she added.
Billiouw biked to the hospital where she works to receive care for light injuries in her legs, and said that she was thankful she hadn't fallen to the side of oncoming traffic instead, according to Bruzz.
The co-founder of a care-on-wheels association said it was not the first time she had been hit by a vehicle while riding her bike in Brussels, after she was hit by a woman driving without a licence in an accident which left her with two displaced vertebrae.
Despite recalling being called "crazy" for choosing to found Wheel of Care, a group of health care professionals who bike to patient's homes in Brussels, Billiouw said the recent incident had made her reconsider.
"I wanted to prove that cyclists could claim their place [in Brussels]," she told Bruzz. "I really thought I could change something, because of this accident, I am considering pulling the plug."
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
