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

Across the thirty-five cities and towns of Essex County, Massachusetts recorded 45,811 crashes from 2022 through 2024, including 95 fatal crashes, 10,604 crashes involving injury, 439 involving a bicycle and 844 involving a pedestrian. That is 11.30 per cent of every crash in the Commonwealth over those three years, and four Essex cities sit in the statewide top twenty: Lynn is tenth of all 349 communities, Lawrence eleventh, Haverhill fourteenth and Peabody twentieth. Yet by the measure that matters most, Essex is not an unusually deadly county. It produced 2.07 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes against a statewide figure of 2.68, and only 8.74 per cent of the state’s fatal crashes despite carrying 11.30 per cent of its crashes. The number that does stand out is pedestrians. Essex produced 14.11 per cent of every pedestrian crash in Massachusetts, a rate about one and a quarter times the state average, and one city drives much of it: Salem recorded 86 pedestrian crashes out of 1,677 total, a rate of 51.3 per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 14.8. Every figure below comes from MassDOT crash records for 2022 through 2024 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.

The Thirty-Five Communities, and Where the Numbers Come From

Essex County covers thirty-five cities and towns: Amesbury, Andover, Beverly, Boxford, Danvers, Essex, Georgetown, Gloucester, Groveland, Hamilton, Haverhill, Ipswich, Lawrence, Lynn, Lynnfield, Manchester, Marblehead, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton, Nahant, Newbury, Newburyport, North Andover, North Reading, Peabody, Rockport, Rowley, Salem, Salisbury, Saugus, Swampscott, Topsfield, Wenham and West Newbury.

The crash counts come from MassDOT’s open crash data, the record assembled from Massachusetts crash reports, covering calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024. The fatal-crash counts come from those same MassDOT records rather than from any federal dataset. The road-level counts further down are for 2024 alone, the most recent complete year in the data, because road naming in the source 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 everything that 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 carry more traffic, including traffic that neither starts nor ends there. That is a real limitation and it is stated up front, because the ratio comparisons later in the piece are the ones that actually carry information.

Four Cities in the Statewide Top Twenty

Ranked by total crashes across the three years, Essex County splits into a heavy northern and coastal tier and a long tail of small inland towns.

Community	Crashes	Fatal	Injury	Statewide crash rank
Lynn	6,074	9	1,694	10th of 349
Lawrence	5,385	5	1,353	11th
Haverhill	4,817	4	961	14th
Peabody	3,746	5	847	20th
Methuen	3,409	8	961	24th
Andover	3,302	9	624	27th
Saugus	2,063	2	638	50th
Gloucester	1,726	1	286	62nd
North Andover	1,715	4	307	66th
Salem	1,677	6	457	69th
Beverly	1,618	2	320	70th
Danvers	1,331	2	387	92nd
Amesbury	875	3	150	133rd
Lynnfield	801	3	183	143rd
Newburyport	765	3	118	149th
Salisbury	739	1	135	151st
Marblehead	637	2	81	166th
North Reading	596	3	121	173rd
Middleton	584	2	115	174th
Ipswich	525	2	90	187th

The remaining fifteen communities each recorded fewer than 500 crashes over the three years: Georgetown 439, Swampscott 421, Boxford 369, Topsfield 294, Newbury 266, Merrimac 237, Rowley 237, Hamilton 209, Groveland 193, Wenham 160, Rockport 160, Manchester 137, West Newbury 135, Essex 108 and Nahant 61.

Lynn and Lawrence together account for 11,459 crashes, exactly a quarter of the county’s total. The per-town figures behind this table are published at the Lynn, Lawrence, Haverhill, Peabody, Methuen, Andover, Salem and Saugus crash pages.

The County Is Safer Per Crash Than Massachusetts as a Whole

This is the finding that surprises people who assume crash volume and crash danger are the same thing.

Measure	Essex County	Statewide	Ratio
Fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes	2.07	2.68	0.77
Injury crashes per 1,000 crashes	231.5	228.9	1.01
Pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes	18.4	14.8	1.25
Bicycle crashes per 1,000 crashes	9.6	10.8	0.89

Essex carries 11.30 per cent of the state’s crashes but only 8.74 per cent of its fatal ones. Injury involvement is almost exactly the state figure. Bicycle involvement sits slightly below it. Only the pedestrian row runs meaningfully hot, and it runs hot enough to be the story of this county.

The likely explanation for the low fatality ratio is the same one that applies in Suffolk County: dense, congested, lower-speed urban road networks generate very large numbers of crashes at speeds people survive. The counties with fewer crashes and worse fatal ratios tend to be the ones with rural roads carrying higher speeds. That is a pattern in the data rather than a claim about any individual collision, and it is worth keeping in mind when an insurer treats a low-speed impact as a minor one. Impact severity and injury severity are separate questions under Massachusetts law, which is the subject of the serious injury threshold article.

Answer Capsule

Essex County, Massachusetts recorded 45,811 crashes across its thirty-five cities and towns from 2022 through 2024, including 95 fatal crashes, 10,604 involving injury, 439 involving a bicycle and 844 involving a pedestrian, per MassDOT open crash data. That is 11.30 per cent of the 405,245 crashes recorded statewide. Lynn leads the county at 6,074 crashes and ranks tenth of all 349 Massachusetts communities, followed by Lawrence at 5,385 (eleventh), Haverhill at 4,817 (fourteenth) and Peabody at 3,746 (twentieth). Essex is safer per crash than the state as a whole: 2.07 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 2.68, and 8.74 per cent of the state’s fatal crashes from 11.30 per cent of its crashes. The exception is pedestrians, at 18.4 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 14.8, driven largely by Salem at 51.3 per 1,000 and Lynn at 44.1. The highest fatal rates sit in small inland towns rather than the cities: Boxford at 8.13 per 1,000, North Reading at 5.03 and Georgetown at 4.56, against Haverhill at 0.83 and Lawrence at 0.93. In 2024 the single highest road-level count in the county was Broadway in Saugus, which carries Route 1, at 112 crashes. On venue, Essex County Superior Court sits in Salem, Lawrence and Newburyport; M.G.L. c. 212, sec. 3 and M.G.L. c. 218, sec. 19 set the statutory line at $25,000 “or an amount ordered from time to time by the supreme judicial court,” and the SJC raised that procedural amount to $50,000 for civil actions commenced on or after January 1, 2020. This is general information, not legal advice. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS.

The Pedestrian Number, and the One City That Drives It

Essex County recorded 844 pedestrian crashes over three years. That is 14.11 per cent of the 5,980 recorded statewide, produced by 11.30 per cent of the crashes.

Broken out by community, among the twenty Essex towns with at least 500 crashes, the pedestrian rate per 1,000 crashes runs as follows:

Community	Crashes	Pedestrian crashes	Per 1,000 crashes
Salem	1,677	86	51.3
Lynn	6,074	268	44.1
Lawrence	5,385	145	26.9
Beverly	1,618	27	16.7
Haverhill	4,817	79	16.4
Gloucester	1,726	25	14.5
Saugus	2,063	27	13.1
Danvers	1,331	16	12.0
Newburyport	765	9	11.8
Peabody	3,746	41	10.9

Salem’s figure is more than three times the statewide rate of 14.8 per 1,000, and it is the highest in the county by a wide margin despite Salem ranking only sixty-ninth statewide for total crashes. Salem is also the county’s worst for bicycle involvement, at 44 bicycle crashes from 1,677 total, a rate of 26.2 per 1,000 against a statewide 10.8. A compact historic street grid with heavy pedestrian traffic produces a crash mix weighted toward people who were walking or riding rather than driving, and Salem’s numbers show that as clearly as any town in the data.

Lynn is the volume story rather than the rate story. Its 268 pedestrian crashes are the most of any Essex community and more than triple Haverhill’s, which had close to as many crashes overall. Lynn also recorded 94 bicycle crashes, again the most in the county.

If you were the person walking or riding, the legal position is not the same as a driver’s. What Massachusetts requires of drivers around pedestrians is set out in pedestrian accident rights, and the rights and duties of cyclists are covered in Massachusetts bicycle laws.

Where the Fatal Rates Actually Concentrate

The cities carry the crash volume. They do not carry the worst fatal ratios.

Among Essex communities with at least 300 crashes, the highest fatal-crash rates per 1,000 crashes are Boxford at 8.13 (369 crashes, 3 fatal), North Reading at 5.03 (596 crashes, 3 fatal), Georgetown at 4.56 (439 crashes, 2 fatal), Newburyport at 3.92 (765 crashes, 3 fatal), Ipswich at 3.81 (525 crashes, 2 fatal), Lynnfield at 3.75 (801 crashes, 3 fatal), Salem at 3.58 (1,677 crashes, 6 fatal) and Amesbury at 3.43 (875 crashes, 3 fatal).

Set those against the county’s two largest cities. Lynn recorded 9 fatal crashes out of 6,074, a rate of 1.48. Lawrence recorded 5 out of 5,385, a rate of 0.93, one of the lowest in the county. Haverhill recorded 4 out of 4,817, a rate of 0.83, the lowest of any Essex community above 1,000 crashes.

Two smaller towns produce even higher ratios, and they carry a caveat that matters. Newbury recorded 4 fatal crashes out of 266 total, a rate of 15.04, and Topsfield 4 out of 294, a rate of 13.61. At those volumes a single additional fatal crash moves the rate several points, so these figures describe small numbers rather than a stable pattern. They are reported here because leaving them out would be selective, not because they support a conclusion about either town.

Andover and Methuen are the exceptions among the larger communities: Andover recorded 9 fatal crashes and Methuen 8, giving rates of 2.73 and 2.35, both above the county average and close to the statewide figure. Both towns carry substantial interstate mileage, which the road data below reflects.

The Roads That Generate the Crashes

These counts are for 2024 alone, the most recent complete year in the dataset.

The single highest road-level count in Essex County is Broadway in Saugus, which is Route 1, at 112 crashes in 2024. Saugus recorded four more of the county’s busier roads in the same year: Main Street at 42, Lincoln Avenue at 25, Route 1 southbound at a further 22 and Walnut Street at 22. For a town ranked fiftieth statewide for total crashes, that is a concentrated pattern, and it sits on a commercial strip of Route 1 rather than being spread across the town.

Peabody is next. Andover Street recorded 89 crashes and Lowell Street 76, with Washington Street at 30, the Newburyport Turnpike southbound, which is Route 1, at 28, and Lynnfield Street at 25.

North Andover recorded 90 crashes on Turnpike Street and 64 on Osgood Street, with Massachusetts Avenue at 33, Main Street at 24 and Sutton Street at 21.

Andover shows the interstate pattern clearly: North Main Street at 51, Interstate 93 northbound at 41, Lowell Street at 39, Interstate 495 southbound at 31 and Main Street at 27.

Lynn’s counts are spread across arterials rather than concentrated: Boston Street northbound at 40, Western Avenue northbound at 40, Western Avenue southbound at 27, Boston Street southbound at 20 and the Lynnway, Route 1A southbound, at 17.

Lawrence and Haverhill are both dominated by Interstate 495. In Lawrence, I-495 northbound recorded 20 crashes, with Broadway northbound at 18, Winthrop Avenue southbound at 18, Broadway southbound at 17 and Haverhill Street westbound at 16. In Haverhill, Washington Street recorded 20 westbound and 18 eastbound, with I-495 at 18 southbound and 17 northbound and Broadway, Route 97 northbound, at 17.

Methuen is the I-93 town: Interstate 93 northbound at 22 and southbound at 12, with the Albert Slack Highway, Route 213, at 18 westbound and 13 eastbound, and Broadway at 14.

Beverly recorded Cabot Street at 42, Elliott Street at 29, Rantoul Street at 29, Dodge Street at 17 and Hale Street at 17. Gloucester recorded Washington Street at 56, Eastern Avenue at 31 and Main Street at 30. Danvers recorded Andover Street, Route 114, at 14 in each direction, with Route 128 southbound at 12.

Two of those corridors have their own articles, because they run well beyond Essex County: Interstate 495 and Route 128. The Merrimack Valley towns at the top of the county are covered across county lines in the Merrimack Valley crash data article.

Which Court Hears an Essex County Injury Case

Venue is a practical question, and Essex is a county where the answer depends on where in it you were.

Essex County Superior Court sits in three places: Salem, at 56 Federal Street; Lawrence, at 43 Appleton Way; and Newburyport, at 145 High Street. That is unusual. Most Massachusetts counties concentrate Superior Court business in one or two courthouses.

Which court, Superior or District, depends on the amount in controversy. M.G.L. c. 212, sec. 3 gives the Superior Court original jurisdiction of civil actions for money damages, and provides that such actions “may proceed in the court only if 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.” M.G.L. c. 218, sec. 19 sets the mirror rule for the District Court and Boston Municipal Court, which may hear money damage actions “only if there is no reasonable likelihood that recovery by the plaintiff will exceed $25,000, or an amount ordered from time to time by the supreme judicial court.”

The Supreme Judicial Court has exercised that power. By an order dated July 17, 2019 and effective for civil actions for money damages commenced on or after January 1, 2020, the procedural amount was raised to $50,000. So the operative line today is $50,000, set by court order rather than by the text of either statute. It is a procedural threshold rather than a hard jurisdictional bar, and getting it wrong is a basis for dismissal, which is one reason the choice is made with the pleadings rather than later.

The District Court divisions serving Essex County and the communities each covers, where verified: Lynn District Court serves Lynn, Marblehead, Nahant, Saugus and Swampscott. Peabody District Court serves Lynnfield and Peabody. Lawrence District Court serves Andover, Lawrence, Methuen and North Andover. Haverhill District Court serves Boxford, Bradford, Georgetown, Groveland and Haverhill. Gloucester District Court serves Essex, Gloucester and Rockport. Salem and Newburyport District Courts also sit in the county and cover the remaining communities.

Court assignment can change, so confirm the current division for a specific town with the Trial Court rather than relying on any article, including this one.

If a Crash Happened in Essex County

A few things follow from the numbers above.

If you were walking when it happened, and particularly in Salem or Lynn, you were in the part of Massachusetts where that is most likely. The pedestrian rate in Salem runs more than three times the state figure, and Lynn recorded more pedestrian crashes than any other community in the county. What drivers owe pedestrians, and how fault is argued in those cases, is set out in pedestrian accident rights.

If it happened on Route 1 in Saugus or Peabody, on Route 114 through Danvers and North Andover, or on I-495 through Lawrence and Haverhill, you were on the corridors that generate the most crashes in the county, and the report may come from the State Police rather than a town department. What has to be reported and by when is covered in reporting a car accident in Massachusetts.

If the other driver was uninsured, or carried only the Massachusetts compulsory minimum, the question becomes which of your own coverages responds and in what order. That is dealt with in uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage.

If an insurer has already telephoned asking for a recorded account of what happened, nothing requires you to give one before you understand your own injuries. See recorded statements to the insurance company.

For local practice detail on the four Essex cities with dedicated pages, including venues and hospitals, see Lynn auto accidents, Lawrence auto accidents, Haverhill auto accidents and Peabody auto accidents, along with Lynn pedestrian claims and Lawrence personal injury.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many car accidents happen in Essex County, Massachusetts?

A: MassDOT recorded 45,811 crashes across the thirty-five communities of Essex County from 2022 through 2024, an average of roughly 15,270 per year. Those crashes included 95 fatal crashes, 10,604 involving injury, 439 involving a bicycle and 844 involving a pedestrian. That is 11.30 per cent of the 405,245 crashes recorded statewide over the same period.

Q: Which Essex County city has the most crashes?

A: Lynn, with 6,074 crashes over the three years, which ranks tenth among all 349 Massachusetts communities. Lawrence follows at 5,385 and ranks eleventh, then Haverhill at 4,817, ranked fourteenth, and Peabody at 3,746, ranked twentieth. Four Essex cities in the statewide top twenty is the most of any county outside Middlesex and Worcester.

Q: Is Essex County more dangerous to drive in than the rest of Massachusetts?

A: Not by fatality rate. Essex recorded 2.07 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 2.68, and produced 8.74 per cent of the state’s fatal crashes from 11.30 per cent of its crashes. Injury involvement matches the state figure almost exactly. The measure where Essex runs above the state is pedestrian involvement, at 18.4 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 14.8.

Q: What is the most dangerous road in Essex County?

A: By 2024 crash count, Broadway in Saugus, which carries Route 1, recorded the most of any single road in the county at 112 crashes. Peabody’s Andover Street recorded 89 and North Andover’s Turnpike Street 90. Those are raw counts on the highest-traffic commercial corridors rather than a measure of risk per trip, and the data does not support calling any road the most dangerous in a per-driver sense.

Q: Why does Salem show such high pedestrian and bicycle numbers?

A: Salem recorded 86 pedestrian crashes and 44 bicycle crashes out of only 1,677 total, giving rates of 51.3 and 26.2 per 1,000 crashes, both the highest in the county and both well above the statewide figures of 14.8 and 10.8. A compact historic street grid carrying heavy foot traffic produces a crash mix weighted toward people not in vehicles. The data shows the pattern; it does not explain any individual collision.

Q: Which court would hear my Essex County injury case?

A: It depends on the amount claimed and on the town. Essex County Superior Court sits in Salem, Lawrence and Newburyport. Under M.G.L. c. 212, sec. 3 and M.G.L. c. 218, sec. 19, the dividing line is $25,000 in the statutory text “or an amount ordered from time to time by the supreme judicial court,” and the SJC raised that procedural amount to $50,000 for civil actions commenced on or after January 1, 2020. District Court divisions include Lynn, Peabody, Lawrence, Haverhill, Gloucester, Salem and Newburyport.

Q: Where does this crash data come from and can I check it?

A: MassDOT’s open crash data, the public record built from Massachusetts crash reports, covering calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024. Fatal counts come from those same MassDOT records. Town-level totals are published for every Massachusetts community clearing the dataset’s threshold at the Massachusetts crash report, and the figures above can be checked against the Lynn, Lawrence, Haverhill, Salem and Beverly town pages. Road-level counts are for 2024 alone.

Q: Does the number of crashes in my town affect my claim?

A: Not directly. Fault in a Massachusetts crash is decided on the evidence of that collision, and under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85 damages are reduced in proportion to each party’s share of the negligence, with recovery barred once your share is greater than the defendants’ combined share. Where local data can matter is context: a corridor with a documented crash history is a fact an investigation can use, and it may bear on a claim against a road authority, which carries its own notice rules covered in suing a government entity.

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. The crash figures describe patterns across three years and thirty-five communities; they say nothing about any particular collision. For advice about a specific situation, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS.

Talking to a Lawyer

County-level data is useful for understanding where and how crashes happen in Essex County. It cannot tell you what your claim is worth or who is at fault, because those questions are answered from the crash report, the medical records, the photographs and the insurance policies in play.

Jim Glaser Law handles injury claims across Essex County, from Lynn and Lawrence to Cape Ann and the Newburyport-area towns. The number is (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.