Dr. John G. Griffith, a cancer specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, died on July 28, about 7:43 a.m., as he fixed a broken bicycle chain while on a bike ride down Route 1, south of the Indian River Inlet Bridge.
An 18-year-old Millsboro man driving southbound on Route 1 had apparently fallen asleep at the wheel, and his car drifted off the roadway, onto the shoulder, striking Griffith and killing him.
The death of the 44-year-old renowned cancer doctor drew a flurry of sympathy from many who had known him or been treated by him, or who knew those whom he had treated.
It also put a laser beam of focus on the danger posed to those bicycling along the rural portions of the state’s highways, prompting state legislators to ask state highway officials whether the installation of rumble strips on such sections of roadway might prevent future fatalities and injuries.
And that plan appears ready to move forward now, with the completion of a state study that found the area could benefit from rumble strips.
“Based on the roadway characteristics and crash experience, the installation of shoulder rumble strips will be installed in undeveloped roadside areas,” said Delaware Department of Transportation Secretary Carolann Wicks in a letter to state Sen. George Howard Bunting Jr. (D-20th) and Rep. Gerald Hocker (R-38th) on Oct. 3. “I believe these will reduce the number of run-off-the-road crashes.”
According to a report issued Sept. 14 in response to the accident and inquiries by Bunting and Hocker, Griffith’s death was the sole fatal accident along the 17-mile stretch of roadway between Dewey Beach and the Maryland State line in recent years, includingin the two-year period between January 2004 and December 2006.
However, it was not atypical in that 60 of the 179 total crashes in that period — 34 percent — were run-off-the-road (ROR) crashes, including nine crashes involving a vehicle striking a bicyclist who was traveling outside the roadway.
The state review also found that, based on a review of national crash data, approximately 42 percent of fatal crashes are ROR crashes. In Delaware, the portion of fatal crashes that are ROR crashes is 37 percent, and the portion of total ROR crashes among all crashes ranges between 20 and 25 percent.
The overall ROR crash rate along the undeveloped areas of Route 1 (46 percent) is greater than both the Delaware and the national fatal crash rate of ROR crashes, the state study reports.
“What we look at is crashes — particularly run-off-the-road crashes,” DelDOT spokesman Darrel Cole explained Wednesday. “And we’re asking, ‘Does it make sense to have rumble strips here? Based on the statistics, do we expect them to reduce the number of crashes?’ In this case, we do.”
Cole said new federal regulations encourage and allow funding for the installation of rumble strips, so the push to add them to some of the state’s undeveloped highway areas comes at an opportune time.
“In some cases we’ve studied, they’re feasible, including on Route 1 north of Sussex County,” he added.
Cole said that despite the move being spurred by the death of a cyclist, one of the hurdles the state has faced in seeking to add rumble strips has been ongoing opposition from bicyclists, for whom they can pose a challenge to riding.
“However,” Wicks wrote, “it should be noted that the cycling community has opposed this type of safety improvement in the past, and they may oppose this again. You are likely to hear from them if this is the case. We are reaching out to the cycling community about our plans prior to the installation, and hope it is well received.”
“One of the challenges is to build them so that the cycling community can actually maneuver there,” Cole explained. “That means things like making sure they’re not put in at entrances. We can also make them not as wide and less ‘bumpy,’ so they’re more amenable to cyclists driving over them but still effective enough so that a driver running over them knows it.”
State regulations for rumble strips adopted in April of 2007 recommend they be considered for divided highway installations, on both the inside and outside shoulders. They do not recommend installation at entrances or developed areas, and this most recent study recommended rumble strips not be installed along developed areas of Route 1.
The state regulations also recommend a minimum clearance on the shoulder of at least 4 feet where there is no guardrail, as is the case along nearly all of this 17-mile stretch of Route 1. Most of the area currently has a shoulder width of 10 feet or more, with an 8-foot, 7-inch shoulder in the vicinity of Fenwick Island State Park.
Even with the rumble strips installed, those shoulder widths would drop only to 7 feet, 8 inches, and 6 feet, 3 inches, respectively. Still, the study advises that DelDOT consider widening the shoulder area to maintain a 10-foot shoulder.
The study also notes that some mid-block sections of Route 1 in undeveloped areas have shared pedestrian/bicycle lanes in a single shoulder, which would result in less than 4 feet available for the bicycle lane, and it recommends that those shared lane markings be removed in favor of bicycle lane markings.
The state regulations advise not adding rumble strips to bridges and overpasses, but the study notes consideration of adding them to the Indian River Inlet Bridge. However, it recommends they not be installed in the construction area for the bridge’s replacement, to allow flexibility for traffic cones and other traffic flow changes.
“We’re researching now, and we’ve had a brief discussion with Delaware Bicycle Council on it. We’ll continue to talk with them, to make sure they understand that we have a way of putting them in that won’t interfere with them using the areas,” Cole said.
Some of those accommodations include a recommendation to install the strips in 30-foot segments, with 10-foot gaps between them to allow cyclists to traverse the rumble strips. Also recommended is a 12-inch rumble strip instead of the standard 16-inch one, and a milled depth of three-eighths inch instead of a half-inch. Regular sweeping of the shoulders for small pebbles and other debris is also recommended for enhanced safety with the strips installed.
“We’d be looking at putting them in undeveloped areas, more open areas, along Route 1,” Cole said. “Hopefully, in the spring of 2008, we could begin installing them.”