How Dangerous Are Bristol County Roads? Three Years of Massachusetts Crash Data

Across the twenty cities and towns of Bristol County, Massachusetts recorded 49,507 crashes from 2022 through 2024, including 107 fatal crashes, 11,329 crashes involving injury, 349 involving a bicycle, and 601 involving a pedestrian. That is 12.2 percent of every crash in the Commonwealth over those three years, and it comes overwhelmingly from two cities: New Bedford recorded 11,070 crashes and Fall River 9,045, placing them fourth and fifth among all 349 Massachusetts communities. New Bedford sits 39 crashes behind Springfield for third place in the entire state. Yet the county is not, by the measure that matters most, an unusually deadly place to drive. Bristol County produced 2.16 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes against a statewide figure of 2.68, and the towns with the worst ratios are not the cities at all. Dighton recorded 175 crashes and 3 of them were fatal, a rate of 17.14 per 1,000, roughly fourteen times Fall River’s. Every figure below comes from MassDOT crash records for 2022 through 2024 and can be checked against the town pages in the Massachusetts crash report. To talk through a crash anywhere in the county, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the line is answered 24 hours a day, and the first telephone consultation is free.

The Twenty Communities, and Where the Numbers Come From

Bristol County is one of the fourteen Massachusetts counties, and unlike a region such as the Merrimack Valley its boundaries are not a matter of opinion. It covers twenty cities and towns: Acushnet, Attleboro, Berkley, Dartmouth, Dighton, Easton, Fairhaven, Fall River, Freetown, Mansfield, New Bedford, North Attleborough, Norton, Raynham, Rehoboth, Seekonk, Somerset, Swansea, Taunton, and Westport.

The crash counts come from MassDOT’s open crash data, the record built from Massachusetts crash reports, covering calendar years 2022, 2023, and 2024. That includes the fatal-crash counts, which come from the same MassDOT records rather than from any federal dataset. The road-level counts further down are for 2024, the most recent complete year in the dataset, because road naming in the source data shifts enough year over year that stacking three years of it produces noise rather than signal.

For scale, the same three years produced 405,245 crashes statewide, 1,087 fatal crashes, 92,759 crashes involving injury, 4,356 involving a bicycle, and 5,980 involving a pedestrian.

One caution about what follows. Every comparison here is crash to crash, not crash per resident and not crash per mile driven. A town with more crashes may simply have more traffic passing through it. That is a real limitation, and it is stated up front rather than buried, because the ratio comparisons later in the piece are the ones that actually carry information.

The County’s Two Cities Rank Fourth and Fifth in Massachusetts

Ranked by total crashes over the three years, Bristol County breaks into a sharp top tier and a long tail.

Community	Crashes	Fatal	Injury	Statewide crash rank
New Bedford	11,070	14	2,330	4th of 349
Fall River	9,045	11	2,286	5th
Taunton	6,644	12	1,275	8th
Attleboro	3,234	4	815	29th
Seekonk	2,167	5	402	46th
Raynham	1,787	4	442	57th
Dartmouth	1,763	6	570	58th
Swansea	1,722	7	445	63rd
Easton	1,585	3	384	74th
Fairhaven	1,559	3	261	76th
North Attleborough	1,555	5	378	77th
Mansfield	1,486	5	365	83rd
Somerset	1,330	8	323	93rd
Westport	1,108	3	246	106th
Norton	970	1	245	121st
Rehoboth	791	3	184	146th
Freetown	713	5	162	154th
Berkley	415	4	95	205th
Acushnet	388	1	87	209th
Dighton	175	3	34	258th

Three communities carry more than half the county. New Bedford, Fall River, and Taunton together account for 26,759 of the county’s 49,507 crashes, or 54 percent.

The New Bedford figure deserves a second look. At 11,070 crashes it trails Springfield’s 11,109 by 39 crashes across three years, which is close enough that the ordering could flip with a single year’s data revision. Boston (17,407) and Worcester (15,598) are the only communities meaningfully ahead. On raw crash volume, New Bedford belongs in the same conversation as the state’s largest cities.

Injury crashes track volume closely. New Bedford recorded 2,330 and Fall River 2,286, a gap of only 44 despite New Bedford recording 2,025 more crashes overall. Read carefully, that says a slightly higher share of Fall River crashes produce an injury.

The Inversion: Cities Produce Crashes, Small Towns Produce Deaths

This is the finding worth carrying away from the dataset, and it is the same pattern the Merrimack Valley crash data shows in a different part of the state. It holds at the other end of the scale too. Middlesex County, the largest county in the Commonwealth by number of municipalities, records 20.5 percent of all Massachusetts crashes at a fatal ratio of 2.02 per 1,000, lower than Bristol’s 2.16 and lower again than the statewide 2.68, while its small highway towns carry ratios several times higher than its cities.

Ranked by fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes, Bristol County turns almost exactly upside down:

Community	Fatal crashes	Total crashes	Fatal per 1,000
Dighton	3	175	17.14
Berkley	4	415	9.64
Freetown	5	713	7.01
Somerset	8	1,330	6.02
Swansea	7	1,722	4.07
Rehoboth	3	791	3.79
Dartmouth	6	1,763	3.40
Taunton	12	6,644	1.81
New Bedford	14	11,070	1.26
Attleboro	4	3,234	1.24
Fall River	11	9,045	1.22
Norton	1	970	1.03

The statewide figure is 2.68 fatal crashes per 1,000. Every one of the county’s three cities sits well below it. Seven smaller communities sit above it, four of them at more than double.

The explanation is not mysterious, and it is not that small-town drivers are worse. Dense urban streets generate enormous numbers of low-speed collisions at intersections, in parking lots, and in stop-and-go traffic. Those crashes bend metal and cause real injuries, but relatively few of them kill. Rural two-lane roads and highway segments generate far fewer collisions per mile of street, and the ones they do generate happen at speeds where survival is much less likely. Somerset and Swansea, which sit on the Route 6 corridor running toward the Rhode Island line, are the clearest illustration inside this county.

Be careful with the smallest numbers. Dighton’s 17.14 rests on 3 fatal crashes. One fewer would move the rate to 11.43. Rates built on single-digit counts are unstable and should be read as a direction, not a measurement.

Answer Capsule

Bristol County’s twenty communities recorded 49,507 crashes from 2022 through 2024, 12.2 percent of the Massachusetts total, including 107 fatal crashes, 11,329 injury crashes, 349 bicycle crashes and 601 pedestrian crashes. New Bedford (11,070) and Fall River (9,045) rank fourth and fifth among all 349 Massachusetts communities, and with Taunton (6,644) the three cities account for 54 percent of the county’s crashes. The county is less lethal per crash than the state as a whole, at 2.16 fatal crashes per 1,000 against 2.68 statewide, and the highest ratios belong to small towns rather than cities: Dighton at 17.14, Berkley at 9.64, Freetown at 7.01 and Somerset at 6.02, against Fall River at 1.22 and New Bedford at 1.26. Bristol County injury lawsuits in the Superior Court are heard at the New Bedford sitting, which the Trial Court’s own location listings identify as the county’s civil session.

The Roads That Carry the Count

Ranked by 2024 crashes, these are the highest-count roads in the county. One limit belongs on the table before the table. The source data carries road-level detail only for communities clearing its threshold of 800 crashes over the three years, which in Bristol County is fifteen of the twenty. The five with no road breakdown are Rehoboth, Freetown, Berkley, Acushnet and Dighton. All five are included in every town-level figure above, and the largest of them, Rehoboth, recorded 791 crashes across the whole three years, which puts a low ceiling on what any single road there could contribute, but the ranking should be read as covering the fifteen rather than the twenty.

Road	Community	2024 crashes
County Street	Taunton	118
Pleasant Street	Fall River	117
Acushnet Avenue	New Bedford	117
Plymouth Avenue	Fall River	114
North Main Street	Fall River	109
Fall River Avenue	Seekonk	102
County Street	New Bedford	94
South Main Street	Fall River	92
Broadway	Taunton	82
Bay Street	Taunton	81
Ashley Boulevard	New Bedford	79
Winthrop Street	Taunton	76
William S. Canning Boulevard	Fall River	75
Washington Street	Easton	74

Four of the top eight are Fall River streets. Pleasant Street, Plymouth Avenue, North Main Street, and South Main Street together recorded 432 crashes in 2024 alone, and William S. Canning Boulevard adds another 75. For a city ranked fifth statewide by total crashes, that concentration on a handful of arterials is the shape of the problem.

Taunton’s pattern is different. Its top four roads (County Street, Broadway, Bay Street, Winthrop Street) recorded 357 crashes between them in 2024, spread more evenly than Fall River’s, which is what you would expect of a road network built around several converging state routes rather than one dense downtown grid.

Seekonk is the outlier in the table. A town ranked 46th statewide, and fifth in the county, by total crashes has the sixth-highest single road in the table, Fall River Avenue at 102 crashes in 2024, with Commerce Way adding 40 and Highland Avenue 28. That is the signature of retail traffic rather than residential traffic, and it points at driveway and turning-movement collisions rather than through-travel.

Route 6, Route 1, and the Interstates

Several county roads appear under names that do not obviously identify the route, so it is worth naming them.

The Grand Army of the Republic Highway is Route 6. It is the top-listed road in Somerset (40 crashes in 2024) and appears three times at the head of Swansea’s list (42, 22, and 22 crashes across separately named segments). Both towns also carry Wilbur Avenue near the top, at 22 crashes in Somerset and 20 in Swansea. This is one continuous corridor running through two adjacent towns, and it is also where two of the county’s worst fatal-crash ratios sit: Somerset at 6.02 per 1,000 and Swansea at 4.07.

Route 1 through Attleboro shows up as Washington Street, split by direction: 25 crashes northbound and 22 southbound in 2024, with Interstate 95 southbound adding 13 and Newport Avenue southbound 8. Attleboro’s overall lethality ratio is low at 1.24 per 1,000.

Interstate 195 appears in Seekonk’s top five (21 crashes westbound in 2024), and Interstate 95 in Attleboro’s. Neither dominates its town’s list the way Interstate 93 and Interstate 495 dominate parts of the Merrimack Valley, which reflects how much of Bristol County’s traffic runs on surface arterials rather than limited-access highway. For the contrast, the Interstate 93 corridor breakdown shows the highway holding the number one and number two crash positions in Boston and the number one position outright in Stoneham and Methuen.

Dartmouth is worth a separate mention because its lethality ratio (3.40 per 1,000) is well above the state figure while its crash count is only 58th. Its highest-count roads are State Road (47 crashes), Faunce Corner Road (39), the Route 6 eastbound segment of State Road (19), Reed Road (18), and Russells Mills Road (17). That is a mix of commercial arterial and rural road, which is exactly the mix the fatal-rate data would predict.

Pedestrians: Two Cities, Two Thirds of the County

Bristol County recorded 601 pedestrian crashes over the three years, 10.1 percent of the statewide total of 5,980. Of those, 410 happened in Fall River (213) and New Bedford (197). That is 68 percent of the county’s pedestrian crashes in two cities.

Both rank high statewide. Fall River is sixth of all 349 Massachusetts communities for pedestrian crashes, one behind Springfield’s 214. New Bedford is seventh. Fall River records more pedestrian crashes than New Bedford despite recording 2,025 fewer crashes overall, which makes Fall River’s pedestrian exposure the most pronounced in the county by a clear margin.

Bicycle crashes run smaller and land differently. The county total is 349, which is 8.0 percent of the statewide 4,356 and the one category where Bristol County is under-represented relative to its share of crashes. New Bedford leads the county at 99 (sixth statewide), Fall River follows at 65, Taunton at 48, and Attleboro at 24.

A pedestrian or cyclist hit by a vehicle in Massachusetts is generally covered by the driver’s Personal Injury Protection even without any policy of their own, which surprises most people it applies to. That is covered in the article on what a pedestrian struck by a vehicle can collect in Massachusetts and, for cyclists, in Massachusetts bicycle laws.

Where a Bristol County Injury Case Is Actually Heard

Bristol County has an unusual court arrangement, and getting it wrong wastes real time.

The Superior Court sits in three places in this county: Taunton, Fall River, and New Bedford. They are not interchangeable. The Trial Court’s own location listings describe the Taunton and Fall River sittings as handling criminal matters and the New Bedford sitting as handling civil matters, with all three serving the cities and towns of Bristol County. So a Bristol County personal injury lawsuit filed in the Superior Court is heard at New Bedford, whether the crash happened in Attleboro, Westport, or anywhere in between.

The District Court has four divisions in the county: Attleboro, Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton.

Which court a case belongs in turns on the amount at stake. M.G.L. c. 212, sec. 3 gives the Superior Court original jurisdiction over civil actions for money damages, and provides that such an action may proceed there only where “there is no reasonable likelihood that recovery by the plaintiff will be less than or equal to $25,000, or an amount ordered from time to time by the supreme judicial court.” A 2019 standing order raised that figure to $50,000 for civil actions for money damages commenced on or after January 1, 2020.

The practical effect: a claim reasonably likely to be worth more than $50,000 belongs in the Superior Court, which in this county means the New Bedford courthouse. Smaller claims belong in the District Court division covering the town where the crash happened or where a party lives.

Most injury claims never reach any of these buildings. They resolve with the insurer before suit is filed. The venue question becomes real when they do not, and when a deadline is approaching. That deadline is three years from the date the cause of action accrues, under M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A, and it is discussed in the article on the statute of limitations for personal injury in Massachusetts.

What These Numbers Do Not Tell You About Your Crash

Crash totals describe patterns across tens of thousands of collisions. They say nothing about who was responsible in any one of them.

Fault in a Massachusetts injury claim is decided on the specific facts, under the comparative negligence rule in M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, which allows recovery where the injured person’s negligence “was not greater than the total amount of negligence attributable to the person or persons against whom recovery is sought”, and reduces damages in proportion to that person’s share. A road with 117 crashes a year is not evidence that the road caused yours. How that works in practice is set out in how fault is determined in a Massachusetts car accident and comparative negligence and partial fault.

If you want the town-level detail behind any figure here, each community has its own page: Fall River, New Bedford, Taunton, Attleboro, Dartmouth, Seekonk, Somerset, Swansea, Westport, Fairhaven, Raynham, Easton, Mansfield, North Attleborough, and Norton.

For the practice-area pages covering the county’s three cities, see auto accidents in Fall River, auto accidents in New Bedford, auto accidents in Taunton, spinal injury claims in Fall River, and Social Security disability in New Bedford.

Personal injury matters at Jim Glaser Law are handled on a contingency fee, meaning no attorney fee unless there is a recovery; costs and expenses are handled separately and are explained in the fee agreement before anything is signed. The intake line is answered 24 hours a day at (617) JIM-WINS, and the first telephone consultation is free.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Bristol County community has the most crashes? A: New Bedford, with 11,070 crashes from 2022 through 2024, the fourth-highest total among all 349 Massachusetts communities. Fall River is second in the county at 9,045 (fifth statewide) and Taunton third at 6,644 (eighth statewide).

Q: Which Bristol County community has the most fatal crashes? A: New Bedford, with 14 fatal crashes over the three years, followed by Taunton at 12 and Fall River at 11. Measured as a share of crashes rather than a raw count, the ranking reverses completely.

Q: Are the cities more dangerous than the small towns? A: Not by the ratio of fatal crashes to total crashes. Fall River (1.22 fatal crashes per 1,000), Attleboro (1.24), and New Bedford (1.26) all sit well below the statewide figure of 2.68, while Dighton reaches 17.14, Berkley 9.64, Freetown 7.01, and Somerset 6.02. Cities produce many crashes at low speeds; rural and highway roads produce fewer crashes at higher speeds. Note that the rates for the smallest towns rest on three to five fatal crashes and are therefore unstable.

Q: Which roads have the most crashes in Bristol County? A: In 2024, County Street in Taunton led at 118 crashes, with Pleasant Street in Fall River and Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford tied at 117, Plymouth Avenue in Fall River at 114, and North Main Street in Fall River at 109. Fall River Avenue in Seekonk recorded 102. The source carries road detail only for the fifteen Bristol County communities clearing its threshold of 800 crashes over the three years, so Rehoboth, Freetown, Berkley, Acushnet and Dighton are not represented in the road ranking.

Q: How many pedestrian and bicycle crashes happen in Bristol County? A: Across the twenty communities, 601 crashes involved a pedestrian and 349 involved a bicycle over the three years. Fall River accounts for 213 of the pedestrian crashes and New Bedford 197, ranking sixth and seventh statewide, and together they make up 68 percent of the county total.

Q: Where would a Bristol County injury lawsuit be filed? A: It depends on the amount at stake. Claims reasonably likely to exceed $50,000 belong in the Superior Court, and the Trial Court’s location listings identify the New Bedford sitting of Bristol County Superior Court as the county’s civil session, with Taunton and Fall River handling criminal matters. Smaller claims belong in one of the four District Court divisions: Attleboro, Fall River, New Bedford, or Taunton. Most claims resolve before any filing.

Q: Why is Route 6 listed under a different name in the data? A: Because MassDOT records the road by its legal name. The Grand Army of the Republic Highway is Route 6, and it appears at or near the top of the road lists for both Somerset and Swansea, the two adjacent towns it runs through.

Q: Where does this crash data come from, and can I check it? A: It comes from MassDOT’s open crash records for 2022 through 2024, including the fatal-crash counts. Every town figure quoted here is published on the town pages at the Massachusetts crash report, and the underlying dataset is publicly available from MassDOT.

Q: Does a high crash count on a road mean the road is at fault for my crash? A: No. Crash totals describe patterns across thousands of collisions and say nothing about who was responsible in any single one. Fault in a Massachusetts injury claim is decided on the specific facts under the comparative negligence rule in M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice? A: No. This is general information about Massachusetts law and publicly available crash data, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. How any rule applies depends entirely on the facts of a specific situation. For advice about a specific matter, speak with a Massachusetts attorney. The Jim Glaser Law line is answered 24 hours a day at (617) JIM-WINS, and the first telephone consultation is free.