Which Massachusetts Towns Have the Most Broadway Crashes?

Saugus. MassDOT’s 2024 crash records show 152 crashes on Broadway in Saugus, across three separately recorded segments, which is more than any other Massachusetts community and nearly twice the next town on the list. Taunton is second at 82, Revere third at 66, Chelsea fourth at 55 and Malden fifth at 53. Twelve Massachusetts cities and towns carry a Broadway segment among their highest-crash roads, and together those twelve town lists account for 581 crashes in that single year. On MassDOT’s statewide top-road list, where each name appears once, Broadway sits at 402 crashes, fifth overall and fourth among street names behind Main Street, Washington Street and Pleasant Street. The more interesting number is not the total. Across three years those twelve communities recorded 8.71 per cent of every crash in Massachusetts, 12.37 per cent of every crash involving a pedestrian, and only 5.06 per cent of every fatal crash. Broadway towns are where people get hit walking and are not where people are most often killed, and those two facts belong together rather than apart. Every figure here comes from MassDOT crash records and can be checked town by town in the Massachusetts crash report. To talk through a crash on any of these streets, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

The Twelve Broadway Towns

These are 2024 counts for road segments recorded under the name Broadway. They are per-town figures rather than corridor totals, because these are twelve different roads that happen to share a name, not one road running through twelve towns.

Town	County	Broadway crashes, 2024	Segments recorded	Broadway’s rank in that town
Saugus	Essex	152	3	highest-crash road in the town
Taunton	Bristol	82	1	second
Revere	Suffolk	66	1	highest-crash road in the town
Chelsea	Suffolk	55	1	second
Malden	Middlesex	53	3	highest-crash road in the town
Lawrence	Essex	48	3	second
Haverhill	Essex	30	2	fifth
Lynnfield	Essex	28	2	highest-crash road in the town
Methuen	Essex	25	2	third
Somerville	Middlesex	17	2	highest-crash road in the town
Everett	Middlesex	17	1	second
Hanover	Plymouth	8	1	eighth

Five of the twelve have Broadway as the single highest-crash road in the municipality: Saugus, Revere, Malden, Lynnfield and Somerville. In another four it is second. A street name that ordinary is doing a remarkable amount of work.

Saugus deserves a word on its own, because 152 in one year is a large number for a town of its size and the segmentation explains part of it. Saugus records Broadway three ways: an unnumbered segment at 112 crashes, which is the highest single road entry in the town, plus a US Route 1 southbound segment at 21 and a US Route 1 northbound segment at 19. That is the same corridor recorded under different designations depending on where along it a crash happened.

Answer Capsule

Saugus has the most Broadway crashes of any Massachusetts community: 152 in 2024, across three separately recorded segments, per MassDOT crash records. Taunton follows at 82, Revere at 66, Chelsea at 55, Malden at 53, Lawrence at 48, Haverhill at 30, Lynnfield at 28, Methuen at 25, Somerville and Everett at 17 each, and Hanover at 8, for a twelve-town total of 581 in that single year. On MassDOT’s statewide top-road list, where each road name appears once rather than town by town, Broadway is recorded at 402 crashes, fifth among all entries and fourth among street names behind Main Street at 2,672, Washington Street at 1,118 and Pleasant Street at 633. Across 2022 to 2024 the twelve Broadway communities recorded 35,287 crashes, 55 of them fatal, 8,728 involving injury, 448 involving a bicycle and 740 involving a pedestrian. That is 8.71 per cent of the statewide 405,239 crashes, 12.37 per cent of the statewide 5,980 pedestrian crashes, 10.28 per cent of the statewide 4,356 bicycle crashes, and 5.06 per cent of the statewide 1,087 fatal crashes. Expressed per 1,000 crashes, the group runs at 20.97 pedestrian against a statewide 14.76, and 1.56 fatal against a statewide 2.68. Within the group the spread is wide and it tracks the character of the street rather than its name: Chelsea is highest on pedestrian involvement at 44.52 per 1,000 and Somerville records 72.04 bicycle crashes per 1,000 with zero fatal crashes in three years, while Lynnfield, where Broadway is US Route 1, is highest on fatal crashes at 3.75 per 1,000 and lowest on pedestrian involvement at 3.75. MassDOT records the street under three route designations, US Route 1 in Saugus and Lynnfield, Route 28 in Lawrence and Methuen, and Route 97 in Haverhill, and unnumbered elsewhere. Crash counts do not establish fault in any individual case. This is general information, not legal advice. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS.

Broadway Is Not One Road, and the Data Proves It

The twelve towns split cleanly into two kinds of street once you stop counting crashes and start looking at who is in them.

Here is the same twelve, ranked by pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes over the three years 2022 to 2024, with the fatal ratio beside it.

Town	Crashes, 3 years	Pedestrian per 1,000	Bicycle per 1,000	Fatal per 1,000
Chelsea	2,920	44.52	13.36	2.40
Somerville	1,999	38.02	72.04	0.00
Malden	2,791	37.26	18.27	1.07
Revere	2,298	32.64	11.75	2.61
Lawrence	5,385	26.93	6.13	0.93
Everett	964	19.71	23.86	3.11
Haverhill	4,815	16.41	9.76	0.83
Saugus	2,063	13.09	7.27	0.97
Methuen	3,409	9.39	3.81	2.35
Taunton	6,644	6.77	7.22	1.81
Hanover	1,198	4.17	4.17	1.67
Lynnfield	801	3.75	3.75	3.75
Statewide	405,239	14.76	10.75	2.68

Six of the twelve are above the statewide pedestrian rate and six are below, and the split is not random. The six above are Chelsea, Somerville, Malden, Revere, Lawrence and Everett, which are among the densest municipalities in the Commonwealth. The six below include Lynnfield and Hanover, where Broadway is a numbered highway through low-density land.

Look at the two ends of the table together and the pattern is hard to miss. Chelsea has twelve times Lynnfield’s pedestrian rate and two thirds of its fatal rate. Somerville records more bicycle crashes per 1,000 than any other community here by a factor of three and did not record a single fatal crash in three years across 1,999 crashes. Lynnfield, the smallest town on the list by crash volume, has the highest fatal ratio of the twelve.

This is not a new pattern on this site, and it is worth saying where it was first found rather than presenting it as a discovery. Main Street crash data for Massachusetts reported the same shape in August: the nineteen communities where Main Street is the highest-crash road run at 17.01 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 14.76, and at 2.26 fatal against 2.68. Broadway pushes both further in the same directions, to 20.97 and 1.56, which is what you would expect from a street name that clusters in denser places than Main Street does.

None of that makes Lynnfield a dangerous town or Somerville a safe one. It reflects the physics of the roads. A crash at 25 miles per hour on a crowded urban street injures far more often than it kills and frequently involves somebody who was walking or cycling. A crash at highway speed on a divided arterial happens less often per mile of exposure and is far more likely to be severe when it does. The statewide averages sit between the two because the state contains both.

Three Route Numbers and One Street Name

MassDOT records road names as they are signed, which is why the same street name arrives in the data wearing different route numbers. Broadway carries three designations across these twelve towns, and each pairs two communities that sit next to each other.

US Route 1, in Saugus and Lynnfield. These are adjacent Essex County towns on the same corridor, and it is the only place in the data where Broadway is a limited-access-style highway. Saugus records Route 1 segments at 21 southbound and 19 northbound on top of its 112-crash unnumbered segment; Lynnfield records 21 northbound and 7 southbound and nothing else.

Route 28, in Lawrence and Methuen. Also adjacent, also Essex County, on the Merrimack. Lawrence records a segment as Route 28 northbound at 13 crashes, jointly named with Essex Street, alongside unnumbered northbound and southbound segments at 18 and 17. Methuen records a Route 28 southbound segment at 11 and an unnumbered segment at 14.

Route 97, in Haverhill. Both directions, 17 northbound and 13 southbound, and Haverhill is the only town on the list where Broadway carries this number.

Everywhere else the segments are recorded without a route number at all: Taunton, Revere, Chelsea, Somerville, Everett and Hanover.

This matters for a practical reason that has nothing to do with statistics. If you are looking for the police report, the MassDOT record, or a prior complaint history for a location on Broadway, the road may be indexed under a route number you were never told about. A crash in Haverhill can sit in the file as Route 97. A crash in Lawrence can sit in the file as Route 28 or as Essex Street. Asking for records under one name and being told there are none is not the same as there being none.

What These Numbers Do Not Say

They do not establish fault. A road’s crash history says nothing about whether a particular driver was careless on a particular day, and no Massachusetts court decides a case on a town aggregate or a road total. Fault is decided on the evidence of the specific collision, which is set out in how fault is determined in a Massachusetts car accident, and an injured person’s own share of the blame is governed by the rule explained in comparative negligence in Massachusetts.

They also do not rank roads by danger. A high count on a busy street usually means high exposure rather than bad design, and the dataset carries no traffic volume to divide by. That limitation applies to every street-name comparison in this library and it is worth stating each time rather than assuming the reader will supply it.

And the two figure types must not be mixed. The 581 is a 2024 count of crashes on segments named Broadway. The 35,287, the 740 pedestrian crashes and the 55 fatal crashes are three-year totals for the entire municipalities those segments sit in, covering every road in those towns. The first describes a street. The second describes the places that street runs through. Both are useful and they answer different questions.

Why the Pedestrian Number Is the One Worth Reading

Of everything above, the figure that should change what someone does is this: the twelve Broadway communities carry 12.37 per cent of the state’s pedestrian crashes on 8.71 per cent of its crashes.

A pedestrian claim is a different animal from a vehicle claim, and the difference starts immediately. There is no second vehicle carrying property damage. The injuries are usually more severe, because there is no structure around the person. Personal injury protection still applies to a pedestrian struck by a motor vehicle in Massachusetts, which surprises people who assume the coverage follows the car they were not in, and how that works is set out in how personal injury protection works in Massachusetts. The statewide picture on pedestrian crashes is covered in Massachusetts pedestrian crash data.

The bicycle figure deserves the same treatment. Somerville’s 72.04 bicycle crashes per 1,000 is more than six times the statewide rate, and Everett at 23.86 and Malden at 18.27 are also well above it. Cyclists in those communities are a large share of the people getting hurt, and the rules that apply to them are covered in Massachusetts bicycle laws.

What the numbers are good for is knowing where to look early. On a corridor that records this much activity, signal timing, sight lines, crosswalk markings, lighting, maintenance records and prior complaint history are worth requesting before they age out of a municipal file. Those records are easiest to get soon after the crash and hardest to get two years later, which is well inside the three-year deadline set out in the Massachusetts statute of limitations for personal injury.

Common Questions

Q: Which Massachusetts town has the most Broadway crashes?

A: Saugus, at 152 in 2024 across three separately recorded segments. That is the largest Broadway figure for any community in the state and nearly double the second, Taunton at 82. Broadway is also the highest-crash road within Saugus itself, ahead of every other named road in the town.

Q: How many Massachusetts towns have a Broadway among their worst roads?

A: Twelve, in the 2024 MassDOT records: Saugus, Taunton, Revere, Chelsea, Malden, Lawrence, Haverhill, Lynnfield, Methuen, Somerville, Everett and Hanover. Together their Broadway segments recorded 581 crashes in that year. On MassDOT’s statewide top-road list, which records each name once, Broadway appears at 402 crashes, fifth among all entries and fourth among street names after Main Street, Washington Street and Pleasant Street.

Q: Is Broadway dangerous?

A: The data cannot answer that, and it is worth being clear about why. Crash counts measure how much traffic and conflict a road carries, not how well it is designed, because the dataset contains no traffic volume to divide by. What the figures do show is a consistent pattern in the kind of crash: the twelve Broadway communities run 42 per cent above the statewide pedestrian rate and 42 per cent below the statewide fatal rate.

Q: Why do Broadway towns have so many pedestrian crashes?

A: Because most of them are dense. Across 2022 to 2024 the twelve recorded 740 pedestrian crashes, 12.37 per cent of the statewide 5,980, on 8.71 per cent of the state’s crashes. Chelsea is highest at 44.52 pedestrian crashes per 1,000, followed by Somerville at 38.02, Malden at 37.26 and Revere at 32.64, against a statewide 14.76. The towns at the other end, Lynnfield at 3.75 and Hanover at 4.17, are the ones where Broadway is a highway through low-density land rather than a downtown street.

Q: Which Broadway town has the highest fatal crash rate?

A: Lynnfield, at 3.75 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes over the three years, followed by Everett at 3.11 and Revere at 2.61. Lynnfield is also the smallest town on the list by crash volume, at 801 over three years, so that ratio rests on 3 fatal crashes and should be read with the size of the denominator in mind. Somerville is at the other end with zero fatal crashes across 1,999.

Q: Is Broadway the same road in every town?

A: No. These are twelve separate streets that share a name, and MassDOT records three different route designations among them: US Route 1 in Saugus and Lynnfield, Route 28 in Lawrence and Methuen, and Route 97 in Haverhill. In Taunton, Revere, Chelsea, Somerville, Everett and Hanover the segments carry no route number at all.

Q: Does a high crash count on Broadway help my case?

A: Not by itself. A crash total for a road or a town does not establish that any particular driver was negligent, and Massachusetts decides fault on the evidence of the individual collision. Where a road’s history can matter is in a claim about the road itself, involving signal timing, sight lines, markings, lighting or maintenance, and those records are far easier to obtain in the months after a crash than in the years after one.

Q: Where can I check the numbers for my own town?

A: Every figure in this article comes from MassDOT crash records for 2022 through 2024 and every one of the twelve towns has its own page in the Massachusetts crash report, with its crash, injury, fatality, bicycle and pedestrian counts, its rank among all 349 Massachusetts communities, and its highest-crash roads by name.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice?

A: No. This is general information about Massachusetts crash data and Massachusetts law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Whether any of it bears on your situation depends on facts that are not in this article, including where the crash happened, who was involved and what the evidence shows. For advice about your own case, speak with a lawyer.