What Do the Numbers Say About Crashes on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts?

They say the islands are a bicycle story, and the size of the effect is larger than anything on the mainland outside two cities. The six island communities that appear in MassDOT’s crash records recorded 1,451 crashes from 2022 through 2024, which is 0.36 percent of the 405,239 crashes Massachusetts recorded over those three years. Those same 1,451 crashes account for 1.54 percent of every bicycle crash in the Commonwealth. Put as a rate, 46.18 of every 1,000 island crashes involved a bicycle against a statewide 10.75, which is 4.3 times the state. Nantucket on its own runs at 50.51 per 1,000, fifth highest of the 249 Massachusetts communities recording at least 200 crashes, behind only Cambridge, Somerville, Provincetown and Brookline. Edgartown is eighth. Pedestrians are over-represented too, at 24.12 per 1,000 against 14.76. And the islands are below the state on the measure people expect them to be above: 20.40 percent of island crashes involved an injury against 22.89 percent statewide. Every figure here comes from MassDOT crash records for 2022 through 2024. To talk through a crash on either island, 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 Six Communities, and the Two That Are Missing

Massachusetts has two island counties. Dukes County is Martha’s Vineyard plus the Elizabeth Islands; Nantucket County is a single municipality covering Nantucket, Tuckernuck and Muskeget.

Six of their communities appear in the MassDOT dataset used throughout this site: Nantucket, and the Vineyard towns of Edgartown, Tisbury, Oak Bluffs, West Tisbury and Chilmark.

Two do not appear at all. Aquinnah and Gosnold are absent from the 349-community dataset, so nothing on this page counts them. Gosnold is the Elizabeth Islands and had a population in the low dozens at the last census; Aquinnah is the Vineyard’s smallest town. Their absence is worth stating plainly rather than papering over, because it means the Dukes County figures below are a five-town total and not a complete county total. The direction of the error is known even if its size is not: both are very small, so the county’s true totals are slightly higher than what follows, and its rates are unlikely to move much.

One more structural point, and it explains why this article exists at all. The crash report on this site publishes a town page for any community clearing 800 crashes over the three years. None of the six island communities clears it. Nantucket comes closest at 792. So there is no island town page to link to, and these numbers appear nowhere else on the site. The same threshold governs road-level detail, which is why there is no ranking of island roads further down: the dataset carries no road records for any of the six.

The Bicycle Finding, Which Is the Whole Story

Community	Crashes	Bicycle	Bicycle per 1,000
Oak Bluffs	121	8	66.12
Tisbury	197	10	50.76
Nantucket	792	40	50.51
Edgartown	211	8	37.91
Chilmark	28	1	35.71
West Tisbury	102	0	0.00
All six	1,451	67	46.18
Massachusetts	405,239	4,356	10.75

Five of the six sit between three and six times the state figure. The statewide comparison that makes the scale clear is not another resort area; it is the densest cycling cities in Massachusetts. Among the 249 communities recording at least 200 crashes over the three years, the top of the bicycle-share table reads Cambridge at 80.42 per 1,000, Somerville at 71.99, Provincetown at 61.54, Brookline at 57.68, then Nantucket at 50.51. Edgartown at 37.91 is eighth. Two island communities sit inside a statewide top ten otherwise made of inner-core cities and the tip of the Cape.

Oak Bluffs and Tisbury post higher rates still, but both fall below the 200-crash line used for that ranking, so they are reported here without a statewide rank attached. A rate built on 121 crashes moves a long way on one additional record.

The honest reading of all this is narrower than the numbers first suggest, and the limit matters. This dataset counts crashes. It contains no measure of how many miles are ridden, driven or walked. A community where a large share of summer trips are made by bicycle will produce a large share of bicycle crashes without any individual rider being at greater risk. What the data supports is a statement about the composition of island crashes: when something happens on these roads, a bicycle is involved far more often than it is anywhere on the mainland outside Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline and Provincetown. That is a real and useful fact for anyone deciding how to get around, and it is not the same as a risk-per-mile finding. The same distinction is drawn in the site’s survey of which Massachusetts city has the most bicycle crashes.

Answer Capsule

The six Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket communities in MassDOT’s crash data recorded 1,451 crashes from 2022 through 2024: 6 fatal, 296 involving an injury, 35 involving a pedestrian and 67 involving a bicycle. That is 0.36 percent of the statewide three-year total of 405,239 crashes but 1.54 percent of the state’s 4,356 bicycle crashes. The islands’ bicycle rate of 46.18 per 1,000 crashes is 4.3 times the statewide 10.75, and their pedestrian rate of 24.12 per 1,000 is 1.63 times the statewide 14.76. Nantucket alone is 50.51 per 1,000 for bicycles, fifth among the 249 Massachusetts communities recording at least 200 crashes, and Edgartown is eighth at 37.91. Against expectation, the islands are below the state on injury share, at 20.40 percent of crashes against 22.89 percent, with Nantucket at 16.41 percent, the 22nd lowest of those 249 communities. Nantucket is the busiest at 792 crashes, 145th of all 349 Massachusetts communities, followed by Edgartown at 211 and Tisbury at 197. The islands recorded 6 fatal crashes across the three years, a base far too small to carry a rate. Aquinnah and Gosnold do not appear in the dataset and are not counted here. A civil case is heard in Dukes County Superior Court at Edgartown or Nantucket Superior Court at Nantucket under G.L. c. 212, sec. 14; below the amount in controversy it goes to the District Court of Dukes County, which G.L. c. 218, sec. 1 says is held at Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Tisbury, or to the District Court of Nantucket. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Pedestrians Are Over-Represented, and One Town Is an Outlier

The islands recorded 35 pedestrian crashes over the three years, which is 24.12 per 1,000 against a statewide 14.76, or 1.63 times the state.

Inside that, the distribution is lopsided in a way the county totals hide.

Community	Crashes	Pedestrian	Pedestrian per 1,000
Tisbury	197	12	60.91
Edgartown	211	7	33.18
Nantucket	792	16	20.20
Oak Bluffs	121	0	0.00
West Tisbury	102	0	0.00
Chilmark	28	0	0.00

Tisbury’s 60.91 per 1,000 is higher than the figure for any of the 249 Massachusetts communities that clear the 200-crash line, where Brookline tops the list at 60.06. Tisbury itself records 197 crashes and so is not in that ranking, and the distance between 12 pedestrian crashes and 11 or 13 is enough to move the rate several points. It is reported as what it is: the highest island figure, on a base small enough that it should be read as a pattern worth noticing rather than a rank.

Tisbury is Vineyard Haven, which is where the year-round ferry lands. Edgartown at 33.18 is the next highest and is the island’s densest walking village. Nantucket at 20.20 is above the state figure and is 32nd of the 249 ranked communities. The three communities with no pedestrian crashes at all across three years are the three smallest by crash count. The pattern is what anyone who has been to either island would guess, which is a reason to trust it and not a reason to skip stating it: pedestrian crashes concentrate where people arrive and where they walk between buildings. The statewide version of this pattern is set out in Massachusetts pedestrian crash data, and what a struck pedestrian can claim is covered in pedestrian accident rights.

The Surprise: Fewer Injuries per Crash, Not More

The expectation people bring to a resort island with narrow roads and mopeds is that crashes there are worse. The data says the opposite, and says it clearly enough to be worth its own section.

Across the six communities, 296 of 1,451 crashes involved an injury, which is 20.40 percent. The statewide figure is 22.89 percent. Nantucket is 16.41 percent, which is the 22nd lowest injury share of the 249 Massachusetts communities recording at least 200 crashes, in a group otherwise made up of places like Marblehead, Gardner, Westford and Newburyport.

The two islands split on this measure, which is the most interesting thing in the whole dataset. Edgartown runs at 28.42 percent, the 22nd highest of those same 249 communities. Nantucket runs at 16.41 percent, the 22nd lowest. Same ocean, same season, opposite ends of the distribution.

The data does not explain why, and what follows is inference rather than a finding. Nantucket’s crash count is heavily weighted toward a compact town centre and a road network with low posted speeds and no divided highway anywhere on the island, which is the environment that produces a great many low-severity contacts. Edgartown’s 211 crashes are spread over a town that includes long stretches of the Edgartown to West Tisbury and Edgartown to Vineyard Haven roads, where speeds are higher. That is the same speed-and-severity gradient the site has measured inside Cape Cod and inside several mainland counties, appearing here between two towns rather than between a city and its hinterland.

Fatal Crashes: Too Few to Rate, and Said So

The six communities recorded 6 fatal crashes across the three years. Oak Bluffs 3, West Tisbury 1, Nantucket 2. Edgartown, Tisbury and Chilmark recorded none.

Dividing 6 by 1,451 gives 4.14 per 1,000 against a statewide 2.68, and the five Dukes County towns alone give 6.07. Neither number should be used. A rate built on six events is not a measurement of anything; one additional crash in either direction moves the island figure by roughly 0.7 per 1,000, and Oak Bluffs’ three fatal crashes on 121 total crashes would produce a rate of 24.79 per 1,000 that means nothing at all. The right statement is the count: six fatal crashes across two islands over three years, three of them in Oak Bluffs.

This is the discipline the site applies everywhere, and it cuts against the more dramatic headline, which is the point of having it.

Roads, and Why There Is No Road Table Here

Every other local piece on this site ends with a ranking of named roads. This one cannot, and the reason is worth a sentence so nobody assumes it was an oversight.

The MassDOT extract behind these pages carries road-level detail only for communities clearing 800 crashes over the three years. No island community does. Nantucket, at 792, misses by eight. So there is no verified road-level count for a single island road, and rather than assemble one from memory or from a tourist map, this article does not offer one. If the underlying dataset’s threshold changes or the next three-year window pushes Nantucket over 800, the road table becomes available and this page can carry it.

Which Court Would Hear an Island Crash Case

The islands are the one part of Massachusetts where this question has an answer nobody guesses correctly, and the answer is entirely in the statute.

The District Court. G.L. c. 218, sec. 1 provides: “The district court of Dukes County, held at Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Tisbury; Dukes County.” And: “The district court of Nantucket, held at Nantucket; Nantucket county.”

Read those two entries against the rest of the section and something stands out. Nearly every other district in Massachusetts is defined by a list of communities. Dedham gets seven named towns, Lowell gets six, Newton gets one. Dukes and Nantucket are the only two districts in the entire section whose territory is a whole county with nothing taken out of it. There is nothing to look up and no town roster to check, because the court’s district is the island county itself. Two mainland divisions are also written as counties but each carries a carve-out: the district court of Franklin covers “Franklin county, except Orange and Erving” and the district court of Hampshire covers “Hampshire county, except Amherst, Belchertown, Granby, Hadley, South Hadley, Pelham and Ware.” The Dukes court is also given three places to sit rather than one, which is unusual but not unique; the northern Berkshire and Hampshire district courts are given several places as well.

The Superior Court. G.L. c. 212, sec. 14 lists the regular sittings county by county: “For Dukes county, at Edgartown,” and “For Nantucket, at Nantucket.” Each island county has exactly one, which puts them alongside Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and apart from Bristol and Essex, which have three each. The same section allows the court to adjourn a sitting from one place to another within the county.

Which of the two levels a case belongs in is a question about money rather than geography, and it is the same question everywhere in the Commonwealth. Under G.L. c. 212, sec. 3 a civil action for money damages may proceed in the Superior Court only if there is no reasonable likelihood that recovery will be less than or equal to $25,000, and under G.L. c. 218, sec. 19 it may proceed in the District Court only if there is no reasonable likelihood recovery will exceed that figure. Both sections carry a note recording that a Supreme Judicial Court standing order dated July 17, 2019, effective January 1, 2020, raised the amount in controversy to $50,000 for actions commenced on or after that date. So the working figure is $50,000 while the statutory text still reads $25,000, and both are correct.

There is a practical consequence that is real on an island and nowhere else. Every step of a case that requires being in the building, and every witness who has to appear, involves a boat or a plane. That is not a legal difference, and the law applied on Nantucket is the law applied in Worcester. It is a scheduling fact that shapes how island cases actually run.

What This Data Does and Does Not Do for a Claim

These figures are background. They are not evidence in anybody’s case, and they should not be treated as any.

What decides an island injury claim is the same thing that decides one anywhere: what happened at that intersection, at that hour, in that light, and what can still be shown about it later. On the islands a few of those things are unusually perishable. Summer witnesses leave. Rental vehicles, mopeds included, go back into a fleet and are re-rented within days. The rider or driver on the other side of a July collision may live somewhere else entirely by September.

Two points of law are worth knowing because they come up on these facts and are commonly misunderstood. A cyclist struck in Massachusetts is not treated as a trespasser on the road; the rights and duties are set out in Massachusetts bicycle laws. And a rented moped or electric scooter is not outside the rules of the road, which are covered in are electric scooters legal in Massachusetts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many crashes happen on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket?

A: The six island communities in MassDOT’s crash data recorded 1,451 crashes across calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, which averages roughly 484 a year. Of that three-year total, 6 were fatal, 296 involved an injury, 35 involved a pedestrian and 67 involved a bicycle. Nantucket accounts for 792 of the crashes, Edgartown 211, Tisbury 197, Oak Bluffs 121, West Tisbury 102 and Chilmark 28. For scale, Massachusetts as a whole recorded 405,239 crashes over the same period, so the islands hold 0.36 percent of the state total.

Q: Which island town has the most crashes?

A: Nantucket, at 792 over the three years, which ranks 145th among the state’s 349 communities. Edgartown is next at 211 and Tisbury at 197. Nantucket’s total is more than the five Martha’s Vineyard towns in the dataset combined, which total 659. No island community reaches the 800-crash threshold the crash report uses to publish a town page, so Nantucket misses that cut by eight crashes.

Q: Are bicycle crashes really more common on the islands?

A: As a share of crashes, yes, and by a wide margin. The islands recorded 46.18 bicycle crashes per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 10.75, which is 4.3 times the state figure, and they produced 1.54 percent of every bicycle crash in Massachusetts from 0.36 percent of its crashes. Nantucket at 50.51 per 1,000 is fifth among the 249 communities recording at least 200 crashes, behind Cambridge, Somerville, Provincetown and Brookline, and Edgartown at 37.91 is eighth. What the data cannot say is whether cycling there is more dangerous per mile ridden, because these records count crashes and contain no measure of how much cycling happens.

Q: Are island crashes more serious than mainland ones?

A: On the injury measure, no. Across the six communities 20.40 percent of crashes involved an injury against a statewide 22.89 percent. Nantucket is 16.41 percent, the 22nd lowest of the 249 communities recording at least 200 crashes. The two islands split sharply on this: Edgartown runs at 28.42 percent, which is the 22nd highest of those same communities. On fatal crashes the honest answer is that the base is too small to support a rate. There were six across two islands in three years.

Q: Which island town is most dangerous for pedestrians?

A: Tisbury records the highest share, at 12 pedestrian crashes in 197, which is 60.91 per 1,000 against a statewide 14.76. That is higher than any community in the ranked group of 249, though Tisbury itself falls below the 200-crash line used for that ranking and the figure rests on 12 events, so it is better read as a pattern than a rank. Edgartown follows at 33.18 per 1,000 and Nantucket at 20.20, which is 32nd of the 249 ranked communities. Oak Bluffs, West Tisbury and Chilmark recorded no pedestrian crashes at all across the three years.

Q: Why are Aquinnah and Gosnold not in these numbers?

A: They do not appear in the 349-community MassDOT dataset this site uses, so no figure on this page includes them. Both are very small, Gosnold being the Elizabeth Islands and Aquinnah the smallest town on Martha’s Vineyard. The practical effect is that the Dukes County figures here are a five-town total rather than a complete county total, and the true county numbers are slightly higher than what is shown.

Q: Which court hears a car accident case on Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket?

A: It depends on the amount in controversy. Above it, the Superior Court, which under G.L. c. 212, sec. 14 holds its regular sittings “For Dukes county, at Edgartown” and “For Nantucket, at Nantucket.” Below it, the District Court: G.L. c. 218, sec. 1 provides for “The district court of Dukes County, held at Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Tisbury; Dukes County,” and “The district court of Nantucket, held at Nantucket; Nantucket county.” These are the only two districts in that section whose territory is an entire county with no towns carved out of it; the Franklin and Hampshire divisions are also written as counties, but each excepts named towns. The dividing line is $50,000, set by a Supreme Judicial Court standing order of July 17, 2019 effective January 1, 2020, although the text of G.L. c. 212, sec. 3 and G.L. c. 218, sec. 19 still reads $25,000.

Q: Where do these numbers come from?

A: MassDOT crash records covering calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, including the fatal counts, for the 349 Massachusetts communities in the dataset. The island totals are the sum of the six communities named at the top of this article, and the statewide comparisons are the dataset’s own statewide figures, which match the sum of all 349 town records exactly. Rankings described as being among 249 communities are limited to those recording at least 200 crashes over the three years, because a rate built on a smaller base moves too far on a single record to be compared fairly.

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, and courthouse locations and session assignments change administratively without any change in the statute. For advice about your own case, speak with a Massachusetts attorney.

Talking to a Lawyer

If you were hurt on either island, the numbers on this page are context and nothing more. What matters in a specific case is the collision itself, and on the islands several of the things that prove it have a short life. Rental mopeds and bicycles go back into a fleet. Summer witnesses go home. The scene in October does not look like the scene in July.

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.