Which Massachusetts Communities Have the Most Crashes on Central Street?

Central Street recorded 372 crashes across Massachusetts in 2024, which places it sixth on the statewide road list and fifth among street names, behind Main Street, Washington Street, Pleasant Street, Interstate 93 northbound and Broadway. Nine communities carry a Central Street on their 2024 high-crash road lists: Stoughton, Peabody, East Bridgewater, Leominster, Franklin, Foxborough, Natick, Hudson and Acton. Stoughton’s Central Street alone records 68 crashes, which is the 63rd busiest single named-road entry in the dataset and by a wide margin the largest Central Street entry in it. What makes this piece worth reading is that it does not repeat what the Main Street and Broadway analyses found. Those two streets ran well above the statewide pedestrian crash rate and well below the fatal rate. Central Street does neither. Across the three years from 2022 through 2024 its nine communities recorded 17,370 crashes, 35 fatal, 3,749 involving injury, 130 involving a bicycle and 151 involving a pedestrian, which puts them below the statewide figure on all four measures. The conclusion is that a shared street name is not a safety signature. It is a record of how and when a town was laid out. Every figure below comes from MassDOT crash records and can be checked town by town in the Massachusetts crash report. Jim Glaser Law can be reached at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Where the Name Ranks, and How That Is Counted

Massachusetts has an enormous number of roads called Central Street, for the same reason it has an enormous number called Main Street. The name describes a position in a town plan, and most Massachusetts towns were laid out around a centre.

In the statewide 2024 road list, which counts one row per road name across the Commonwealth, Central Street records 372 crashes. That places it sixth overall, and fifth among street names:

Road name	Crashes, 2024
Main Street	2,672
Washington Street	1,118
Pleasant Street	633
Interstate 93 northbound	444
Broadway	402
Central Street	372

There is a counting trap here worth naming, because this series walked into it once already and caught it before publishing. If you instead add up every Central Street entry that appears on an individual town’s road list, you get 228 across eleven entries in nine communities, not 372. The two numbers measure different things. The statewide list captures the name everywhere it appears. The town lists exist only for communities above the dataset’s crash threshold, so smaller towns contribute nothing to a per-town sum even though their Central Streets are real and their crashes are in the statewide figure.

The rule this site follows is to rank road names off the statewide list, and to report a per-town sum only as what the town lists sum to, labelled as such. That is what is happening throughout this article.

The Nine Communities

Ranked by 2024 crashes on the road itself:

Community	Central Street crashes, 2024	Town crashes, 2022 to 2024	Fatal	Statewide crash rank
Stoughton	68	2,350	8	39
Franklin	36 (three entries)	890	4	131
Peabody	24	3,746	5	20
East Bridgewater	24	1,148	0	104
Leominster	23	3,543	4	22
Foxborough	16	1,609	10	71
Natick	15	1,997	1	53
Hudson	15	1,245	0	97
Acton	7	842	3	138

Two entries in that table need explaining rather than presenting.

Franklin’s 36 is not one road. It is three separate rows in the source data: West Central Street at 19, East Central Street at 11, and a second row spelled West Central Street at 6. In Franklin the road running through the town centre changes its directional prefix at the common, and the source data records the spelling variants separately. Treating them as one name is the defensible reading; treating Franklin as the second busiest Central Street in the state would not be, which is why the 68 in Stoughton is described here as the busiest single entry.

Natick’s entry is recorded as West Central Street carrying Route 135 westbound. It is a state-numbered route that happens to be named Central Street through part of the town, which is a reminder that a street name and a route number describe the same pavement at different levels of officialdom. A police report, an insurance file and a MassDOT record can each name it differently.

Answer Capsule

Roads named Central Street recorded 372 crashes across Massachusetts in 2024, making it the sixth most common road name in the state’s crash records after Main Street, Washington Street, Pleasant Street, Interstate 93 and Broadway. Nine communities carry a Central Street on their 2024 high-crash lists, led by Stoughton at 68 crashes, the 63rd busiest single named-road entry in the dataset. Franklin follows at 36 across three name variants, then Peabody and East Bridgewater at 24 each. Unlike Main Street and Broadway, the Central Street communities show no distinctive danger signature: across 2022 through 2024 they recorded 17,370 crashes with 35 fatal, 3,749 injury, 130 bicycle and 151 pedestrian, which as rates per 1,000 crashes is 2.01, 215.83, 7.48 and 8.69 against statewide figures of 2.68, 228.90, 10.75 and 14.76. Below the state on every measure. The street name is a fact about town planning history, not about road safety.

The Result That Did Not Replicate

This series has now measured four common street names, and the fourth is the interesting one.

Main Street’s communities ran at 17.01 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 14.76, and 2.26 fatal against 2.68. Broadway’s twelve communities ran at 20.97 pedestrian and 1.56 fatal. Both showed the same shape: more people struck on foot, fewer people killed, than the state as a whole. It was a consistent enough pattern that it started to look like a property of these old central roads.

Central Street does not do it. Here are the nine communities pooled across all three years, against the state:

Measure, per 1,000 crashes	Central Street communities	Massachusetts
Fatal crashes	2.01	2.68
Crashes involving injury	215.83	228.90
Crashes involving a bicycle	7.48	10.75
Crashes involving a pedestrian	8.69	14.76

Below the state on all four, and the pedestrian figure is not close: 8.69 against 14.76 is roughly forty per cent lower, where Broadway was forty per cent higher.

The straightforward explanation is that the earlier pattern was never about the street. It was about which communities happen to have a road by that name on a high-crash list. Broadway’s twelve communities included Everett, Chelsea, Somerville, Saugus and Revere, which are dense, walked, inner-ring places. The nine Central Street communities are Stoughton, Peabody, East Bridgewater, Leominster, Franklin, Foxborough, Natick, Hudson and Acton, which are mostly suburban towns along commuter corridors. Fewer people crossing on foot per crash, fewer crashes at the speeds and angles that kill.

So the honest finding, stated as a finding rather than buried: a shared street name carries no safety signature in this dataset. It carries information about when and how a town was laid out, and the safety numbers follow the town, not the name. Anyone reading the earlier pieces in this series should read that correction back onto them.

Where the Severity Actually Sits

Pooling nine towns hides the variation inside them, so it is worth separating.

Foxborough is the outlier on severity. Ten fatal crashes on 1,609 total crashes is 6.22 per 1,000, about 2.3 times the statewide 2.68, and the highest of the nine by a clear margin. Franklin follows at 4.49 on four fatal crashes out of 890, Acton at 3.56 on three out of 842, and Stoughton at 3.40 on eight out of 2,350.

Two of the nine recorded no fatal crash at all across the full three years: East Bridgewater on 1,148 crashes, and Hudson on 1,245.

One caution belongs with all of those numbers. These are town-wide figures. The dataset does not attach a fatality to a specific road, so nothing here says any death occurred on any road called Central Street. The severity comparison is between the communities, not between the streets.

The other caution is that a ratio built on a small number of fatal events is fragile. Foxborough’s 6.22 rests on ten events over three years. Franklin’s 4.49 rests on four. Move one event either way and the ordering changes. The band is worth reporting. Any single town’s rank inside it is not.

Volume and Severity Are Different Questions

Peabody and Leominster are the largest communities on this list by crash volume, ranking 20th and 22nd of all 349 Massachusetts communities with 3,746 and 3,543 crashes across three years. Both have fatal rates well below the state: 1.33 and 1.13 per 1,000.

Stoughton, ranked 39th on volume with 2,350 crashes, runs at 3.40.

Acton, ranked 138th with 842 crashes, runs at 3.56.

That inversion is the most consistent thing this whole crash-data series has found across every county, region and corridor it has measured. The places with the most crashes are rarely the places with the most dangerous crashes. High volume tends to mean a lot of traffic moving slowly through a built-up area, which produces many collisions and comparatively few deaths. Lower volume on faster roads produces the reverse. Any ranking that reports only the raw counts is answering a different question from the one most people are asking.

What the Data Can and Cannot Tell You About a Claim

If you were in a crash on a road named Central Street in one of these communities, this dataset does not establish anything about fault. That is decided on the evidence of the specific collision: the reports, the scene, the vehicle damage, the witnesses and the medical records.

Where the data does real work is in pointing at records that exist. A road generating dozens of crashes a year is a road where signal timing studies, sight-line surveys, maintenance and paving logs, and prior complaints to the municipality are likely to exist. Those are worth requesting early, because they are the kind of records that get overwritten or discarded on a schedule. Where a claim involves the condition of the road itself rather than another driver, a public entity may be involved, and claims against public entities in Massachusetts run on their own and much shorter notice rules, covered in suing a government entity in Massachusetts.

For the ordinary two-vehicle case, the mechanics are in how fault is determined in a Massachusetts car accident, and the filing deadline is in the Massachusetts statute of limitations.

The Rest of the Series

The other named-road analyses built on the same dataset: Main Street, Washington Street, Pleasant Street and Broadway. The statewide pictures are in Massachusetts injury crash data, pedestrian crash data and fatal crash locations.

Town-level numbers for every one of the 349 Massachusetts communities, including all nine here, are in the Massachusetts crash report. The individual pages for the communities in this article are Stoughton, Peabody, East Bridgewater, Leominster, Franklin, Foxborough, Natick, Hudson and Acton.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Massachusetts community has the most crashes on Central Street?

A: Stoughton, and not narrowly. Its Central Street recorded 68 crashes in 2024, the most recent complete year in the MassDOT dataset. Peabody and East Bridgewater follow at 24 each, then Leominster at 23. Franklin records 36 across three separate entries, 19 on West Central Street, 11 on East Central Street and 6 on a second West Central Street spelling, which is a naming artefact of the source data rather than three different roads. Stoughton’s 68 is also the 63rd highest single named-road crash count among all 1,152 town-road entries in the dataset.

Q: How common is the name Central Street in Massachusetts crash records?

A: It is sixth on the statewide 2024 road list at 372 crashes, and fifth among street names once Interstate 93 is set aside. Ahead of it are Main Street at 2,672, Washington Street at 1,118, Pleasant Street at 633, Interstate 93 northbound at 444 and Broadway at 402. That statewide list counts one row per road name across the Commonwealth, which is the correct way to rank a street name. Adding up the individual town lists gives a different and smaller number, 228 across eleven entries in nine communities, because only communities above the dataset’s crash threshold get road-level detail published at all.

Q: Are roads named Central Street unusually dangerous?

A: On this dataset, no, and that is the most useful thing in this article. Across 2022 through 2024 the nine communities carrying a Central Street recorded 17,370 crashes, of which 35 were fatal, 3,749 involved injury, 130 involved a bicycle and 151 involved a pedestrian. As rates per 1,000 crashes that is 2.01 fatal, 215.83 injury, 7.48 bicycle and 8.69 pedestrian, against statewide figures of 2.68, 228.90, 10.75 and 14.76. Below the state on all four. This breaks the pattern the Main Street and Broadway pieces both found, and the honest reading is that the pattern was never about the name.

Q: Why did Main Street and Broadway show a pattern and Central Street does not?

A: Because the earlier pattern was a description of the communities, not of the pavement. Main Street and Broadway concentrate in dense older centres and inner-ring cities, where crashes happen at low speed among many people on foot: more pedestrians struck, proportionally fewer people killed. The nine Central Street communities are mostly suburban and commuter towns, which produce fewer pedestrian encounters per crash and fewer fatal outcomes per crash than the state as a whole. Same measurement, different towns, different answer. A street name tracks when and how a town was laid out, not how safe its roads are.

Q: Which Central Street community has the highest fatal crash rate?

A: Foxborough, at 6.22 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes, on 10 fatal crashes out of 1,609 across the three years. That is roughly 2.3 times the statewide 2.68. Franklin follows at 4.49, Acton at 3.56 and Stoughton at 3.40. At the other end, East Bridgewater recorded 1,148 crashes and Hudson 1,245 with no fatal crash in either over the three years. These are town-wide figures, not Central Street figures: the dataset does not attach fatality to an individual road, so nothing here says a death occurred on any Central Street.

Q: Does a busy road mean a dangerous road?

A: Usually the opposite, on these measures. Peabody and Leominster rank 20th and 22nd among all 349 Massachusetts communities for crash volume and run at 1.33 and 1.13 fatal crashes per 1,000, both well below the statewide 2.68. Acton ranks 138th on volume and runs at 3.56. High crash counts generally mean heavy traffic moving slowly through built-up areas, which produces many collisions and comparatively few deaths, while quieter and faster roads produce the reverse.

Q: Can this data prove who was at fault in my crash?

A: No, and it is worth being plain about that. Fault is decided on the evidence of the specific collision, and a road’s crash history does not establish that any particular driver was careless. Where the data is genuinely useful is practical rather than evidentiary. A corridor that generates dozens of crashes a year is a corridor where signal timing records, sight-line surveys, maintenance logs and prior resident complaints exist and are worth requesting early, and where the municipality’s own knowledge of the location may matter.

Q: Where do these numbers come from and what are their limits?

A: MassDOT’s open crash data, built from Massachusetts crash reports, covering calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, including the fatal counts. Road-level counts are for 2024 alone, the most recent complete year, because road naming in the source shifts year to year and stacking three years of it produces noise. Two real limits. Every comparison here is crash to crash, not crash per resident or per mile driven, so a busier road may simply carry more traffic. And road detail is published only for communities above the dataset’s crash threshold, so a Central Street in a small town is absent from the ranking rather than crash free.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice?

A: No. This is general information about Massachusetts law and public crash data, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Whether any of it applies to your situation depends on facts that are not in this article. For advice about your own case, speak with a lawyer.

Talking to a Lawyer

If you were hurt in a crash in Stoughton, Peabody, East Bridgewater, Leominster, Franklin, Foxborough, Natick, Hudson or Acton, the numbers on this page are background rather than evidence. What matters in your case is the specific collision and what can still be documented about it.

Jim Glaser Law can be reached at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.