Which Road Has the Most Crashes in Massachusetts? Main Street

Not an interstate. In the most recent complete year of MassDOT crash records, 2024, the single highest entry on the statewide top-road list is MAIN ST at 2,672 crashes. The highest interstate entry on the same list is Interstate 93 northbound at 444, which makes the Main Street figure 6.02 times larger. Washington Street is second at 1,118 and Pleasant Street third at 633, so the top three entries in Massachusetts are all ordinary downtown streets before a highway appears at all. Seven of the twenty-four entries on that list are Main Street under one spelling or another, and together they account for 4,271 crashes. What this does not mean is that Main Street is the most dangerous road in the state, and the reasons are set out below rather than left out. 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, and the first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

The Statewide List

MassDOT publishes a top-road breakdown for the most recent complete year. These are the leading entries for 2024, exactly as the source records them.

Rank	Road as recorded	Crashes, 2024
1	MAIN ST	2,672
2	WASHINGTON ST	1,118
3	PLEASANT ST	633
4	INTERSTATE 93 northbound	444
5	BROADWAY	402
6	CENTRAL ST	372
7	North Main St	367
8	INTERSTATE 93 southbound	359

Further down the same list sit MAIN STREET at 309, SOUTH MAIN ST at 242, N MAIN ST at 229, E MAIN ST at 227 and West Main St at 225. Those are separate entries in the source, because MassDOT records the street name as it was written on the crash report, and this article does not merge them.

The Obvious Headline, and Why It Is Wrong

A firm that wanted a frightening statistic could stop reading at the table. Three reasons not to.

Main Street is a name, not a road. Interstate 93 is one highway. MAIN ST is what hundreds of separate streets in hundreds of separate communities are called. Comparing the two is comparing a naming convention against a single piece of infrastructure. The comparison is still worth making, because it shows where crashes actually happen in Massachusetts, but it is not a ranking of individual roads and nothing here should be read as one.

Severity runs the other way. MassDOT also publishes the roads with the most fatal crashes in 2024. That list is led by Interstate 495 northbound at 9 fatal crashes, followed by Interstate 93 northbound, the Massachusetts Turnpike westbound, Pilgrim Highway southbound and South Street at 3 each. The only Main-family entry anywhere on it is NORTH MAIN ST at 2. Across 2022 through 2024, the nineteen communities where Main Street is the single highest-crash road recorded 54,493 crashes and 123 fatal ones, a rate of 2.26 fatal crashes per 1,000 against a Massachusetts figure of 2.68. Those towns are below the state average for deaths, not above it.

The data contains no traffic volume. MassDOT crash records count collisions. They do not count vehicles, trips, turns or pedestrians. So nothing in this dataset can separate a road that is more dangerous from a road that simply carries far more of everything. A Main Street with parking on both sides, driveways every hundred feet, four-way intersections, delivery vehicles and people crossing to shops will produce more recorded collisions than a limited-access highway carrying the same number of cars, and that is a plausible explanation for the whole finding.

Answer Capsule

In the most recent complete year of MassDOT crash records, 2024, the highest single entry on the Massachusetts statewide top-road list is MAIN ST at 2,672 crashes, 6.02 times the highest interstate entry, Interstate 93 northbound at 444. Washington Street is second at 1,118 and Pleasant Street third at 633, so the three leading entries statewide are all ordinary local streets. Broadway is fifth overall at 402, and the twelve communities that carry one are examined in Broadway crash data for Massachusetts. Seven of the twenty-four entries are Main Street in some spelling, totalling 4,271 crashes. Sixty of the 349 Massachusetts communities record a road named simply Main Street among their eight highest-crash roads, and in nineteen of them it is the single highest-crash road in town. In two communities, Tewksbury and Holden, Main Street alone records more crashes than the other seven roads on the town’s list combined. The finding is about volume rather than severity: the 2024 statewide top-fatal-roads list is led by Interstate 495 northbound at 9 fatal crashes, and the nineteen Main-Street-first communities average 2.26 fatal crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 2.68. What does run higher in those communities is pedestrian exposure, 17.01 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 against 14.76 statewide, while their bicycle rate is lower than the state. MassDOT crash records carry no traffic volume, so they cannot distinguish a more dangerous road from a busier one. All figures are MassDOT crash records for 2022 through 2024, with road counts for 2024.

Where Main Street Leads Its Own Town

Sixty of the 349 Massachusetts communities record a road written simply as Main Street or Main St among their eight highest-crash roads. In nineteen of them it is the number one road in town.

Community	Main Street crashes, 2024	Crashes 2022-2024, all roads	Statewide crash rank
Worcester	171	15,598	2 of 349
Tewksbury	169	1,806	56 of 349
Weymouth	134	3,384	26 of 349
Brockton	96	7,378	7 of 349
Woburn	78	3,144	30 of 349
Holden	68	815	141 of 349
Walpole	66	1,220	100 of 349
Agawam	62	2,034	51 of 349
Hudson	49	1,245	97 of 349
Melrose	48	841	139 of 349
Wakefield	46	1,328	94 of 349
Wilmington	43	1,532	82 of 349
Acton	41	842	138 of 349
Southbridge	35	1,016	115 of 349
Holyoke	34	4,245	18 of 349
Sturbridge	30	1,400	88 of 349
Waltham	28	4,333	17 of 349
Hingham	28	1,235	98 of 349
Concord	24	1,097	107 of 349

Those nineteen Main Street entries come to 1,250 crashes in one year. Across all sixty communities the figure is 2,143.

Two time windows appear in that table and they are not interchangeable. The Main Street counts are 2024 alone, because MassDOT publishes the top-road breakdown for the most recent year only. The all-roads totals and every rate in this article are 2022, 2023 and 2024 combined.

The sixty town entries total 2,143, while the statewide MAIN ST figure is 2,672. The gap is not an error. Each town’s list is capped at eight roads, so a community whose Main Street ranks ninth contributes to the statewide count and appears nowhere in the town-level one.

Tewksbury and Holden: Where One Street Outweighs the Rest of Town

In two Massachusetts communities, and only two, Main Street records more crashes than every other road on the town’s list added together.

Tewksbury. Main Street recorded 169 crashes in 2024. The other seven roads on the town’s list, Andover Street at 27, Shawsheen Street at 27, Whipple Road at 19, East Street at 13, Interstate 495 southbound at 11, Livingston Street at 11 and Pleasant Street at 10, come to 118 between them. Main Street is 58.9 per cent of all crashes on the town’s eight highest-crash roads, and it is more than six times the next road.

The scale is the part worth pausing on. Tewksbury ranks 56th of 349 communities for total crashes, with 1,806 across three years, which is roughly one ninth of Worcester’s total. Its Main Street nonetheless recorded 169 crashes in 2024 against Worcester’s 171. A town outside the state’s fifty busiest has a street that very nearly matches the second largest crash city in Massachusetts. You can see the full picture for the town in the Tewksbury crash report.

Holden. Main Street recorded 68 crashes against 46 for the other seven roads combined, which is 59.6 per cent, the highest concentration of the two. Holden ranks 141st of 349 for crash volume with 815 across three years and recorded a single fatal crash in that period. Its list is also the only one in this group that carries Main Street twice: the leading entry at 68, and a separate Main Street Route 122A north entry at 7. The Holden crash report has the rest.

Neither of these is a severity finding. Both towns are small, and both sit below the statewide fatal rate. What the numbers describe is a place where a single street carries most of the collision risk a resident meets inside their own town.

The Bigger Cities Show the Opposite Shape

Worcester’s Main Street recorded 171 crashes in 2024, the most of any Main Street in Massachusetts and the highest-crash road in a city that ranks second statewide for crash volume with 15,598 across three years and third for fatal-crash count at 29. But in Worcester, Main Street is 22.3 per cent of the crashes on the city’s top eight roads, not 59 per cent. Park Avenue, Grafton Street, Belmont Street, Chandler Street, Lincoln Street and both directions of Interstate 290 are all doing meaningful work behind it. The full breakdown is in the Worcester crash report, and claims in that city are covered at Worcester car accident claims.

The same pattern holds in the other large communities on the list. Brockton, seventh statewide with 7,378 crashes and 20 fatal, records 96 on Main Street; see the Brockton crash report and Brockton car accident claims. Weymouth, 26th with 3,384 crashes, records 134 on Main Street with Washington Street second at 68, and that second street name is the subject of its own piece, the Washington Street crash data for all 28 towns that record it; see the Weymouth crash report and Weymouth car accident claims. Waltham, 17th with 4,333 crashes, records 28. Woburn, 30th with 3,144, records 78, and the Woburn crash report carries the rest. Melrose, 139th with 841 crashes, records 48, which is 44.4 per cent of its top-eight total; that is in the Melrose crash report.

Read across the two groups and the shape is consistent. In a large city, Main Street is one busy arterial among several. In a small town it can be nearly the whole story.

What Actually Runs Higher on These Streets

There is one measure where the Main Street communities separate from the state, and one where they run the other way. Both are reported here.

Across 2022 through 2024 the nineteen communities where Main Street leads recorded 927 pedestrian crashes against 54,493 crashes overall, which is 17.01 pedestrian crashes per 1,000. The Massachusetts figure is 14.76 per 1,000. That is roughly fifteen per cent more pedestrian involvement than the state as a whole.

Bicycle crashes go the other way. The same nineteen communities recorded 445 bicycle crashes, or 8.17 per 1,000, against a statewide 10.75. Their injury share is 22.97 per cent against a statewide 22.89, which is effectively identical, and their fatal rate is lower, as noted above.

One caveat belongs in the same breath as those numbers. MassDOT publishes pedestrian and bicycle counts at town level, not per road. So this is a statement about the nineteen towns, not about their Main Streets specifically. It is consistent with what a downtown arterial is, a street with crosswalks, parked cars, storefronts and people crossing between them, but the dataset cannot prove that the pedestrian crashes happened on the street the town is named for in this article.

The Law That Fits This Kind of Street

Highway crash law is largely about speed, lane changes and road design. The law that governs a downtown Main Street is a different body of rules, and three parts of it matter more here than anywhere else in Massachusetts.

Crosswalks. M.G.L. c. 89, sec. 11 requires that where traffic signals are absent or not operating, “the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be so to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk” marked to state standards, where the pedestrian is on the driver’s half of the road or approaches “from the opposite half of the traveled part of the way to within 10 feet.” The same section forbids something drivers do routinely on a busy Main Street: “No driver of a vehicle shall pass any other vehicle which has stopped at a marked crosswalk to permit a pedestrian to cross, nor shall any such operator enter a marked crosswalk while a pedestrian is crossing or until there is a sufficient space beyond the crosswalk to accommodate the vehicle he is operating,” and that holds “notwithstanding that a traffic control signal may indicate that vehicles may proceed.”

Most people know the yield rule. Far fewer know the last paragraph of that section, and it is the most useful sentence in this article for anyone hurt in a crosswalk. Sec. 11 provides that whenever a pedestrian is injured by a motor vehicle in a marked crosswalk, the state police or “the municipal police department with jurisdiction of the street” shall conduct an investigation “into the cause of the injury and any violation of this section or other law or ordinance” and “shall issue the appropriate civil or criminal citation or file an application for the appropriate criminal complaint, if any.” That investigation is not discretionary. Asking for the resulting report early is a concrete step, and the violation itself carries a fine “of not more than $200,” which is a small penalty attached to a large evidentiary fact.

Car doors. Main Street parking means doors opening into a travel lane. M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 14 states that “no person shall open a door on a motor vehicle unless it is reasonably safe to do so without interfering with the movement of other traffic, including bicyclists and pedestrians.” The same section requires that “in passing a vulnerable user, the operator of a motor vehicle shall pass at a safe distance of not less than 4 feet and at a reasonable and proper speed.”

Bicycles and the business district. M.G.L. c. 85, sec. 11B gives cyclists “the right to use all public ways in the commonwealth except limited access or express state highways where signs specifically prohibiting bicycles have been posted.” It permits sidewalk riding only “outside business districts when necessary in the interest of safety, unless otherwise directed by local ordinance.” A downtown Main Street is the paradigm business district, which means the sidewalk exception generally does not reach it, and a cyclist on a Main Street sidewalk is in a different position from one riding a sidewalk in a residential neighbourhood. Cycling rules generally are covered in Massachusetts bicycle laws, and claims are at bicycle accident claims.

One thing none of these does is decide a case by itself. Under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, a violation of a statute or ordinance by an injured person “shall be considered as evidence of negligence” but “shall not as a matter of law and for that reason alone, serve to bar a plaintiff from recovery,” damages are reduced in proportion to fault, and “the plaintiff shall be presumed to have been in the exercise of due care.” A pedestrian who stepped out mid-block and a cyclist on a downtown sidewalk both still have claims to make. How that arithmetic works is set out in comparative negligence in Massachusetts and what a failure to mitigate damages actually requires.

The ordinary deadline for a negligence claim in Massachusetts is three years under M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A, and a claim against a city or town runs on a different and much shorter clock. The full set is in the Massachusetts statute of limitations for every claim.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What road has the most crashes in Massachusetts?

A: On MassDOT’s statewide top-road list for 2024, the leading entry is MAIN ST at 2,672 crashes, ahead of WASHINGTON ST at 1,118 and PLEASANT ST at 633. The highest interstate entry is Interstate 93 northbound at 444, which the Main Street figure exceeds by a factor of 6.02. Seven of the twenty-four entries on that list are Main Street in some spelling and together they account for 4,271 crashes.

Q: Does that mean Main Street is the most dangerous road in Massachusetts?

A: No, and the data does not support saying so. MAIN ST is a name shared by hundreds of separate streets rather than one road, so the comparison with a single interstate is not a like-for-like ranking. Severity also runs the other way: the 2024 statewide top-fatal-roads list is led by Interstate 495 northbound at 9 fatal crashes, the only Main-family entry on it is NORTH MAIN ST at 2, and across 2022 through 2024 the nineteen communities where Main Street leads averaged 2.26 fatal crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 2.68. MassDOT crash records also carry no traffic volume, so they cannot distinguish a more dangerous road from a busier one.

Q: Which Massachusetts town has the worst Main Street for crashes?

A: By raw count, Worcester, at 171 crashes in 2024, with Tewksbury just behind at 169 and Weymouth third at 134. By concentration it is Tewksbury and Holden, the only two communities where Main Street alone records more crashes than the other seven roads on the town’s list combined: 169 against 118 in Tewksbury, and 68 against 46 in Holden.

Q: How is it that a town like Tewksbury nearly matches Worcester?

A: Because the two numbers are measuring different things. Worcester is the state’s second largest crash community overall, with 15,598 crashes across three years, and its Main Street is 22.3 per cent of the crashes on its eight highest-crash roads. Tewksbury ranks 56th of 349 with 1,806 crashes across the same period, but 58.9 per cent of the crashes on its top eight roads happen on one street. Worcester spreads its crashes across many arterials; Tewksbury concentrates them on one.

Q: Why do the town figures add up to less than the statewide figure?

A: Because each town’s road breakdown is capped at eight entries. Sixty communities list a road named simply Main Street among their eight highest-crash roads, and those sixty entries total 2,143 crashes, while the statewide MAIN ST figure is 2,672. The difference is Main Streets that rank ninth or lower in their own town: they count statewide and are invisible town by town. Nothing is missing from the data, and the two numbers are not meant to match.

Q: Are there more pedestrian crashes on these streets?

A: In those towns, yes. Across 2022 through 2024 the nineteen communities where Main Street is the highest-crash road recorded 17.01 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 14.76. Their bicycle rate is lower than the state, 8.17 per 1,000 against 10.75. One limit belongs with that figure: MassDOT publishes pedestrian and bicycle counts by town, not by road, so this describes the towns rather than their Main Streets specifically.

Q: I was hit in a crosswalk on a Main Street. Does the law say anything specific?

A: Two things. M.G.L. c. 89, sec. 11 requires a driver to “yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be” to a pedestrian in a marked crosswalk, and separately forbids passing a vehicle that has stopped at a marked crosswalk to let someone cross. And the last paragraph of the same section requires that whenever a pedestrian is injured by a motor vehicle in a marked crosswalk, the state police or the municipal department with jurisdiction “shall conduct an investigation into the cause of the injury and any violation of this section or other law or ordinance” and shall issue the appropriate citation or apply for a complaint. That investigation is mandatory, and the report it produces is worth requesting early.

Q: What about a cyclist who was doored on a downtown street?

A: M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 14 provides that “no person shall open a door on a motor vehicle unless it is reasonably safe to do so without interfering with the movement of other traffic, including bicyclists and pedestrians.” The same section requires drivers passing a vulnerable user to leave “a safe distance of not less than 4 feet.” Note also that M.G.L. c. 85, sec. 11B allows sidewalk riding only “outside business districts,” so a downtown Main Street is generally not a street where the sidewalk is an option.

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. Crash statistics describe patterns across many collisions and say nothing about who was at fault in any particular one. To discuss a specific situation, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is free.

Talking to a Lawyer

The useful conclusion from this data is not a warning about one street. It is that the crash a Massachusetts resident is most likely to be in happens on an ordinary road in the middle of their own town, at low speed, near a crosswalk or a parked car, and that this kind of collision is governed by a set of rules most drivers have never read. The mandatory crosswalk investigation in M.G.L. c. 89, sec. 11, the door-opening duty in c. 90, sec. 14, and the four-foot passing distance in the same section are all specific, checkable obligations that decide cases, and none of them are what people expect to be arguing about after a crash.

Jim Glaser Law takes calls about crashes on Main Streets and every other Massachusetts road, in Worcester, Tewksbury, Weymouth, Brockton, Woburn, Holden and anywhere else in the Commonwealth. The line at (617) JIM-WINS is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is free.