Which Massachusetts City Has the Most Bicycle Crashes?

Cambridge. MassDOT crash records show 384 crashes involving a bicycle in Cambridge across 2022, 2023 and 2024, which is more than any other community in the Commonwealth and more than Boston, where 273 were recorded over the same three years. That result is worth sitting with, because Boston recorded 17,407 crashes of all kinds in that period against Cambridge’s 4,774. Boston has roughly three and a half times as much crash volume and fewer bicycle crashes. Behind those two come Somerville at 144, Springfield at 128 and Worcester at 116. Measured as a share of each community’s own crashes, the gap is starker still: 80.44 of every 1,000 Cambridge crashes involved a bicycle, against a statewide figure of 10.75. All figures here come from MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data covering all 349 Massachusetts cities and towns. To discuss a specific crash, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Bicycle Crashes Are the One Category Going Up

Before the map, the clock, because it is the more consequential finding.

Massachusetts recorded 405,239 crashes over the three years in this dataset. Total crash volume barely moved: 134,472 in 2022, 135,326 in 2023, 135,441 in 2024, a rise of 0.7 per cent across the whole period. Pedestrian crashes fell, from 2,029 to 1,995 to 1,956, down 3.6 per cent. Fatal crashes went 413, then 324, then 350.

Bicycle crashes did something different. They went 1,353, then 1,422, then 1,581, a rise of 16.9 per cent from the first year to the third.

Year	Bicycle crashes	All crashes	Bicycle per 1,000
2022	1,353	134,472	10.06
2023	1,422	135,326	10.51
2024	1,581	135,441	11.67

Because the denominator hardly changed, this is not an artefact of more driving. The share of Massachusetts crashes that involve a bicycle went from 10.06 per 1,000 to 11.67 per 1,000 in three years.

Two cautions belong right next to that. Three years is a short window, and a three point rise is a trend in this file rather than a projection about next year. And a crash count is not a risk rate: MassDOT crash records carry no measure of how many people are riding, so a rise in bicycle crashes is consistent with more riding, with more dangerous riding conditions, or with both, and this dataset cannot separate them. What can be said without qualification is that the direction is opposite to the pedestrian numbers, which is set out in the companion article on where pedestrians are most often hit in Massachusetts.

The Ten Communities With the Most

Ranked by bicycle crashes recorded, 2022 through 2024.

Community	Bicycle crashes	All crashes	Per 1,000 crashes
Cambridge	384	4,774	80.44
Boston	273	17,407	15.68
Somerville	144	1,999	72.04
Springfield	128	11,109	11.52
Worcester	116	15,598	7.44
New Bedford	99	11,070	8.94
Lowell	99	7,781	12.72
Lynn	94	6,074	15.48
Newton	83	4,924	16.86
Quincy	71	6,455	11.00

Those ten account for 1,491 of the state’s 4,356 bicycle crashes, or 34.2 per cent. Brookline ties Quincy at 71 and would be an eleventh entry, on 1,231 total crashes, which puts its rate at 57.68 per 1,000.

Read the last column and the table argues with itself, the same way it does in the pedestrian data but harder. Worcester and Springfield are here on raw count because they are large, and their rates, 7.44 and 11.52, sit at or below the state figure. Cambridge is here on both.

Answer Capsule

Cambridge has the most bicycle crashes of any Massachusetts community: 384 recorded across 2022, 2023 and 2024 in MassDOT crash data, ahead of Boston at 273, Somerville at 144, Springfield at 128 and Worcester at 116. Cambridge leads on raw count despite having roughly one quarter of Boston’s total crash volume, and it also leads on rate, with 80.44 bicycle crashes per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 10.75. Bicycle crashes are the only category in this three-year file that increased, rising from 1,353 in 2022 to 1,581 in 2024.

Ranked by Share, Four Communities Separate From the Rest

Rates on small numbers are unstable, so this table is limited to the 116 Massachusetts communities that recorded 1,000 or more crashes across the three years. Below that threshold a single crash can move a rate by several points.

Community	Bicycle per 1,000	Bicycle crashes	All crashes
Cambridge	80.44	384	4,774
Somerville	72.04	144	1,999
Brookline	57.68	71	1,231
Arlington	42.38	47	1,109
Salem	26.24	44	1,677
Falmouth	23.77	51	2,146
Lexington	22.46	38	1,692
Dennis	21.01	22	1,047
Needham	20.70	32	1,546
Yarmouth	20.64	36	1,744
Northampton	18.73	30	1,602
Malden	18.27	51	2,791

The top four are a group. Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline and Arlington are contiguous, they are the densest part of the inner core outside Boston proper, and between them they recorded 646 bicycle crashes, 14.8 per cent of every bicycle crash in Massachusetts, on 9,113 crashes, which is 2.2 per cent of the state’s crash total. Roughly one bicycle crash in seven in the Commonwealth happened in those four communities.

Then the table changes character. Falmouth, Dennis and Yarmouth are not commuting cities. They are Cape Cod towns, and their presence is a different phenomenon: summer recreational riding on roads built for other purposes. The tell is that the Cape towns do not carry a matching pedestrian rate. Falmouth records 23.77 bicycle crashes per 1,000 and only 12.12 pedestrian, below the statewide 14.76. Dennis records 21.01 bicycle and 6.69 pedestrian. In the inner-core group the two rise together; on the Cape they come apart. Whatever is happening in Falmouth is about bicycles specifically, not about a general absence of cars.

Cambridge Is Genuinely Unusual, and Not Only on Bicycles

Eight per cent of all crashes recorded in Cambridge across three years involved a bicycle. Statewide the figure is just under 1.1 per cent. Cambridge alone accounts for 8.8 per cent of every bicycle crash in Massachusetts while accounting for 1.2 per cent of the state’s crashes.

The roads carry it too. Cambridge’s highest-crash roads in 2024 are Massachusetts Avenue eastbound at 20 crashes, Massachusetts Avenue westbound at 17, Cambridge Street eastbound at 12 and Massachusetts Avenue northbound at 10. Those are ordinary urban arterials with numbers in the tens. Boston’s list for the same year opens with Interstate 93 southbound at 219 and Interstate 93 northbound at 198. The two cities are not running the same kind of road network, and that is most of the explanation for why Boston’s crash total is so much larger while its bicycle count is smaller. A great deal of Boston’s crash volume happens on limited access highway where no bicycle is present.

There is a second number in Cambridge worth naming, because it points the opposite way. Cambridge recorded 7 fatal crashes across the three years, out of 4,774. That is 1.47 per 1,000, against a statewide 2.68. Boston recorded 65. Somerville recorded none at all across 1,999 crashes.

So the inner-core pattern is high bicycle and pedestrian involvement together with low lethality, which is the shape that slow, congested, heavily intersected street networks produce. More crashes involving people outside a vehicle, fewer crashes that kill anyone. That pairing has shown up in this site’s road-name analyses as well, in the Broadway and Main Street data.

Most of Massachusetts Records Almost No Bicycle Crashes

The concentration is severe, and tighter than for crashes generally.

Half of the state’s 4,356 bicycle crashes occurred in 22 communities. Eighty per cent occurred in 77. Eighty-nine of the 349 Massachusetts cities and towns, more than a quarter of the Commonwealth, recorded no bicycle crash at all in three full years. The 233 communities with fewer than 1,000 total crashes hold 17.4 per cent of the state’s bicycle crashes between them.

That distribution says something simple. A bicycle crash requires a bicycle, so bicycle crashes are distributed like cycling, not like traffic. They cluster where people ride to get somewhere, in the inner core and around the universities, and where people ride for pleasure in season, on the Cape. In much of the state they are close to absent from the record.

What the Numbers Do Not Decide

A town-level crash count describes a pattern across thousands of collisions. It does not establish anything about a particular one, and it is worth being direct about that, because the temptation runs the other way.

Fault in a Massachusetts bicycle crash is decided on the facts of that collision: the positions of the rider and the driver, the signals and markings, sight lines, speed, door zones, and the accounts of the people who were there. Massachusetts apportions fault between the parties under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, which provides that contributory negligence does not bar recovery so long as the injured person’s share was not greater than the total attributable to the parties they are recovering from, with damages reduced in proportion to that share. The same section abolishes the defense of assumption of risk, places the burden of proving negligence that would reduce or bar recovery on the party asserting it, and provides that the plaintiff shall be presumed to have been in the exercise of due care.

Section 85 also provides that the violation of a criminal statute, ordinance or regulation by a plaintiff which contributed to the injury shall be considered as evidence of negligence, but shall not, as a matter of law and for that reason alone, bar recovery. For a cyclist that is the provision that governs questions about lights, signals and local rules. The rules of the road themselves, including what Massachusetts requires of riders and of drivers passing them, are set out in Massachusetts bicycle laws.

If you were hit while riding, the useful steps are the ordinary ones and they are time-sensitive. Make sure a police report exists, because bicycle crashes are underreported and a crash with no report is harder to reconstruct later. Get medical attention even if you feel able to ride home. Photograph the location, including the lane markings, any bike lane, parked cars and sight lines, since street configurations change. Keep the bicycle and the helmet as they are rather than repairing or discarding them, because the damage is evidence. Get names and numbers for witnesses.

Common Questions

Q: Which Massachusetts city has the most bicycle crashes?

A: Cambridge, with 384 recorded across 2022, 2023 and 2024 in MassDOT crash data. Boston is second at 273, Somerville third at 144, Springfield fourth at 128 and Worcester fifth at 116. Cambridge leads even though Boston recorded 17,407 total crashes over the same period against Cambridge’s 4,774.

Q: How can Cambridge have more bicycle crashes than Boston?

A: Because the two cities have different road networks and different amounts of cycling. Much of Boston’s crash volume sits on limited access highway where bicycles are not present; its two highest-crash roads in 2024 were Interstate 93 southbound at 219 crashes and Interstate 93 northbound at 198. Cambridge’s highest-crash roads that year were Massachusetts Avenue eastbound at 20, Massachusetts Avenue westbound at 17 and Cambridge Street eastbound at 12, all ordinary urban streets. Measured as a share of each city’s own crashes the difference is large: 80.44 bicycle crashes per 1,000 in Cambridge against 15.68 in Boston.

Q: Which community has the highest rate of bicycle crashes?

A: Cambridge, among the 116 Massachusetts communities that recorded 1,000 or more crashes in the three-year file, at 80.44 bicycle crashes per 1,000 crashes, roughly seven and a half times the statewide 10.75. Somerville follows at 72.04, Brookline at 57.68 and Arlington at 42.38. Communities under the 1,000-crash threshold are excluded because a single crash moves their rate by several points.

Q: Are bicycle crashes increasing in Massachusetts?

A: In this three-year window, yes, and it is the only category in the file that rose. Recorded bicycle crashes went from 1,353 in 2022 to 1,422 in 2023 to 1,581 in 2024, a rise of 16.9 per cent, while total crashes rose 0.7 per cent and pedestrian crashes fell 3.6 per cent. As a share of all crashes the figure moved from 10.06 per 1,000 to 11.67. Three years is a short window and this is a description of the record rather than a forecast. The data also carries no measure of how many people are riding, so it cannot separate more cycling from more dangerous cycling conditions.

Q: Why do Cape Cod towns appear on the list?

A: Because summer recreational riding produces crashes on roads that were not built around it, and the data shows this cluster is different in kind from the inner-core one. Falmouth records 23.77 bicycle crashes per 1,000, Dennis 21.01 and Yarmouth 20.64, all well above the statewide 10.75. The distinguishing feature is that their pedestrian rates do not rise alongside: Falmouth is at 12.12 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 and Dennis at 6.69, both below the statewide 14.76. In Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline and Arlington the bicycle and pedestrian rates rise together.

Q: How many Massachusetts towns record no bicycle crashes?

A: Eighty-nine of the 349 communities recorded none at all across the full three years. The distribution is tight at the other end too: half of the state’s 4,356 bicycle crashes occurred in just 22 communities and 80 per cent in 77. The 233 communities with fewer than 1,000 total crashes account for 17.4 per cent of the state’s bicycle crashes between them.

Q: Does a high bicycle crash count in my city help my claim?

A: No. Fault in a Massachusetts crash is decided on the evidence of the individual collision: where the rider and the driver were, the markings and signals, sight lines, speed and the accounts of the people involved. Massachusetts apportions fault between the parties under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, so the question is about that intersection on that day. A crash total for a city describes a pattern across thousands of collisions and has no evidentiary role in an individual case, in either direction.

Q: Where does this data come from?

A: MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data, the Commonwealth’s public record of crashes reported to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, covering calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024 for all 349 Massachusetts cities and towns. It is the same dataset behind every town page in the crash report on this site. Town figures here were computed by summing the per-community bicycle, pedestrian, fatal and total counts; the Cambridge road figures are 2024 only, because MassDOT publishes the highest-crash road lists by single year. The file used here was generated on 1 September 2026 and gives a statewide total of 405,239 crashes, which is why it differs slightly from figures quoted in earlier articles on this site that were computed from an earlier refresh of the same source.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice?

A: No. This is general legal and public-safety information about Massachusetts crash data, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Whether any of it bears on a particular crash depends on facts this page cannot know. For a specific crash, speak with a Massachusetts lawyer about your own facts. To discuss a situation, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.