Michael Gropp was killed ten years ago

When he was killed on April 6 ten years ago, Michael Gropp was only 16 years old. Today, he would have been 26 years old.

I still have a vivid recollection of the insinuating questions raised immediately after the crash that killed him ten years ago today. Michael was killed while crossing Christiana Road (SR 273) – a high-speed, four lane suburban arterial road – where it slices between a couple of subdivisions three miles east of Newark. It was about 10PM and – despite the fact (which was reported immediately) that he was killed by a hit-and-run driver – I can remember how quick people were to make the worst possible assumptions about a young man they had never met and knew nothing about.

What was he doing out so late at night?

Isn’t that suspicious?

When a pedestrian is killed in Delaware it’s not unusual to hear these kinds of comments and questions. It wasn’t unusual in 2010…and it seems no less unusual in 2020. There seems to be some sort of impulse among many people to automatically make the worst possible assumptions – with absolutely zero evidence – about people killed in pedestrian crashes.

In most ways the death of Michael Gropp was just like the deaths of dozens of other pedestrians who are (still) killed every single year in Delaware. But in a few ways it was different and one of those ways was that that we fairly quickly learned where he was coming from, where he was going to, and why. Unusually, Michael had actually not been alone when he was struck and killed. A local NBC news station found out and interviewed the person he had been with, who turned out to be his girlfriend. His girlfriend revealed the reason this 16-year old had been trying to cross a dangerous road late at night: He was walking her home.

When Michael was struck and killed in 2010, Bike Delaware’s mission did not include pedestrian safety. It took a while but that finally changed in 2016. Today – although it’s not reflected in our name – Bike Delaware dedicates just as much attention, effort and focus to the safety of people walking in Delaware as we do the safety of people cycling. Pedestrian safety is now explicitly part of our mission, and we work really hard at at it. It has taken years of advocacy but – in just a few months – Delaware will break ground on the single most ambitious pedestrian safety project in its history along a 7 mile stretch of Dupont Highway:

I believe this Dupont Highway project will ultimately save dozens of lives. Perhaps some of those lives saved will be young men and woman who will have a chance to grow up, get married and have children and careers. Michael never got to do any of those things but it helps me to think of this project as his legacy.

  James Wilson is the executive director of Bike Delaware.