Which Massachusetts Communities Have the Most Driveway Crashes?

Springfield, by raw count, with 333 of the 8,658 driveway crashes MassDOT recorded statewide from 2022 through 2024. But the count is the less interesting ranking, because big cities have more of everything. Measured as a share of a community’s own crashes, the answer changes completely: Northborough leads at 7.03 per cent and Waltham is second at 6.92 per cent, against a statewide figure of 2.14 per cent. Boston, which records more crashes than any community in Massachusetts at 17,407, has the lowest driveway share of any large community in the state at 0.22 per cent, or 39 crashes in three years. Waltham, with a quarter of Boston’s crash volume, records almost eight times as many driveway crashes. This is the one crash pattern in the MassDOT data where the map of Massachusetts turns upside down, and the suburbs carry the burden the cities do not. Every figure here comes from MassDOT crash records and can be checked community by community in the Massachusetts crash report. To talk through 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.

What Counts as a Driveway Crash Here

Every Massachusetts crash record carries a field describing the junction where the collision happened, and driveway is one of its values, sitting alongside four-way intersection, T-intersection, Y-intersection, five-point or more, on-ramp, off-ramp, traffic circle, railway grade crossing, and not at a junction at all.

A driveway in this data is any point where a private way meets a public one. The entrance to a shopping plaza, the apron of a petrol station, a supermarket exit, an apartment complex gate and a single-family home’s driveway are all the same category. The source does not distinguish a commercial curb cut from a residential one, which matters for reading the community table below, and it is a real limit rather than a quibble.

Across the three years, driveways account for 8,658 of the 405,239 crashes recorded in Massachusetts, which is 2.14 per cent. 288 of the state’s 349 communities recorded at least one.

Answer Capsule

Springfield records the most driveway crashes of any Massachusetts community by count, 333 from 2022 through 2024, followed by Waltham at 300, New Bedford at 184, Leominster at 159 and Taunton at 147. Measured as a share of each community’s own crashes, which corrects for size, the ranking is different: Northborough 7.03 per cent, Waltham 6.92, Westwood 5.56, Agawam 5.51 and Gardner 5.24, against a statewide 2.14 per cent. Boston is the clearest outlier in the opposite direction, with the largest crash total in the state at 17,407 and a driveway share of 0.22 per cent. Statewide there were 8,658 driveway crashes, spread across 288 of 349 communities. They are the least harmful junction type per crash in the MassDOT file: 16.20 per cent recorded an injury against 22.89 per cent statewide, and 1.39 per 1,000 were fatal against 2.68 statewide. They are nonetheless over-represented for people outside a vehicle, with pedestrians in 2.09 per cent of driveway crashes against 1.48 per cent statewide and cyclists in 1.82 per cent against 1.07 per cent. Angle collisions are 39.95 per cent of driveway crashes, which is the crossing-path signature of a junction. Fault for a vehicle leaving a driveway is decided under the Standards of Fault in 211 CMR 74, covered separately. This is general information about public crash data and Massachusetts law, not legal advice. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Ranked by Share of the Community’s Own Crashes

This is the ranking that corrects for size. Every community with at least 60 driveway crashes across the three years, ordered by what share of its own total those represent. The rank column is the community’s position among all 349 Massachusetts communities by total crashes, which shows how many of these are mid-sized places rather than cities.

Community	Driveway crashes	All crashes	Driveway share	Rank by volume
Northborough	60	853	7.03%	135
Waltham	300	4,333	6.92%	17
Westwood	82	1,474	5.56%	84
Agawam	112	2,034	5.51%	51
Gardner	81	1,546	5.24%	79
Auburn	106	2,247	4.72%	42
Fairhaven	70	1,559	4.49%	76
Leominster	159	3,543	4.49%	22
Attleboro	140	3,234	4.33%	29
Dartmouth	74	1,763	4.20%	58
Raynham	72	1,787	4.03%	57
Beverly	64	1,618	3.96%	70
Salem	65	1,677	3.88%	69
Seekonk	83	2,167	3.83%	46
Charlton	67	1,751	3.83%	59
Yarmouth	66	1,744	3.78%	60

Ranked by raw count instead, the order is Springfield 333, Waltham 300, New Bedford 184, Leominster 159, Taunton 147, Worcester 144, Chicopee 141 and Attleboro 140. Springfield tops that list while sitting at 3.00 per cent by share, which is above the state figure but well below Waltham. Both rankings are reported here because either one alone would mislead.

The Upside Down Map

The finding worth keeping is the contrast at the extremes.

Boston is ranked first in Massachusetts for total crashes at 17,407 and last among large communities for driveway share at 0.22 per cent, 39 crashes over three years. Worcester, ranked second at 15,598 crashes, records 144 driveway crashes for a share of 0.92 per cent. Cambridge sits at 1.21 per cent.

Waltham, ranked seventeenth by volume, records 300. That is more than seven times Boston’s driveway count from about a quarter of Boston’s crashes.

Almost every other crash pattern in this data concentrates in the dense cities. This one does the opposite, and the communities at the top of the share table look alike in a way the volume table hides: Northborough, Auburn, Seekonk, Raynham, Agawam and Attleboro are all towns whose crash burden sits on commercial arterials lined with curb cuts rather than on a downtown grid.

Three explanations fit, and the data supports none of them on its own, so they are offered as possibilities rather than conclusions. A dense city grid has fewer private curb cuts per mile of road and more signalised junctions, so a collision there is likelier to be coded as an intersection. A strip-commercial arterial has a driveway every few dozen metres with traffic crossing them at speed. And coding practice may vary between departments, since the officer completing the report chooses the value. Which of the three dominates is not something these records can settle.

Driveway Crashes Are the Least Harmful Per Crash, and That Is Real

An article about a hazard is expected to report that the hazard is worse than people think. Here the honest finding runs the other way.

Of the 8,658 driveway crashes, 1,403 recorded an injury, which is 16.20 per cent. That is below the statewide 22.89 per cent and well below the 26.85 per cent recorded at intersections. Twelve were fatal, a rate of 1.39 per 1,000 against a statewide 2.68. Those twelve are spread across eleven communities, with only Charlton recording two.

The reason is speed. A vehicle entering or leaving a driveway is usually doing so slowly, and the vehicle it meets is on a local road rather than a highway. The collision geometry of a driveway resembles an intersection, but the energy involved is much lower. That is the same relationship set out in what is the most common type of car crash in Massachusetts, where the most frequent collision type is also among the least lethal.

Where the Risk Actually Concentrates: People Outside the Car

The low overall severity hides the finding that matters most.

Pedestrians were involved in 181 of the 8,658 driveway crashes, which is 2.09 per cent. Across all Massachusetts crashes the pedestrian share is 1.48 per cent. Cyclists were involved in 158, or 1.82 per cent, against a statewide 1.07 per cent. So a driveway crash is roughly 1.4 times as likely to involve someone on foot and 1.7 times as likely to involve someone on a bicycle as a Massachusetts crash chosen at random.

That is the mechanism nobody designs for. A driveway crosses a footway. A vehicle leaving a plaza or a garage crosses the sidewalk before it reaches the road, and the person on that sidewalk is where the driver is not looking, because the driver is looking left for a gap in traffic.

The communities where this shows most are the ones combining volume with footfall. Waltham records 8 pedestrian and 8 bicycle driveway crashes, Springfield 7 and 7. For the wider pedestrian picture see Massachusetts pedestrian crash data, and for cyclists which Massachusetts city has the most bicycle crashes.

What Kind of Collision a Driveway Produces

The manner of collision recorded at driveways confirms that they behave like junctions rather than like open road.

Angle collisions are 3,459 of the 8,658, which is 39.95 per cent. Single vehicle crashes are 1,575, or 18.19 per cent, a figure that includes vehicles striking pedestrians. Rear-end collisions are 819, or 9.46 per cent, sideswipes in the same direction 651, and rear to side 501.

An angle share of nearly 40 per cent against a statewide 23.91 per cent is the crossing-path signature. Two vehicles on paths that meet at an angle is exactly what a driveway creates, which is why the collision profile looks far more like an intersection than like a stretch of road, even though the consequences are milder.

What These Numbers Cannot Tell You

Crash records count collisions and carry no measure of exposure. Nothing here says how many vehicles used a driveway without incident, so the data cannot say whether any driveway, or driveways generally, are dangerous per use. A community with a high share may simply have more driveways.

The source also does not distinguish a shopping plaza entrance from a residential driveway, so the table cannot be read as a statement about home driveways.

61 of the 349 Massachusetts communities recorded no driveway crash across the three years. That is what the records show, and for the smallest towns it reflects low traffic volume rather than an absence of risk.

Finally, these figures describe patterns across thousands of collisions and say nothing about fault in any particular one.

Who Is at Fault When a Car Leaves a Driveway

This article deliberately does not answer that question, because it is answered in full elsewhere on this site and the short version invites error.

Massachusetts decides it on two separate tracks that can disagree: an insurance surcharge decision under the Standards of Fault in 211 CMR 74, where Standard 17 covers a vehicle leaving or exiting from a parked position, parking lot, alley or driveway, and a legal fault decision expressed as a percentage under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85. A presumption on the first track does not settle the second. The full treatment, including why two backing vehicles can genuinely come out even, is in who is at fault in a Massachusetts parking lot accident, and the general framework in how fault is determined in a Massachusetts car accident.

Whether an injury from one of these crashes supports a claim for pain and suffering turns on M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 6D rather than on where the collision happened. See the serious injury threshold.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Massachusetts community has the most driveway crashes?

A: Springfield by count, with 333 from 2022 through 2024, followed by Waltham at 300 and New Bedford at 184. Measured as a share of the community’s own crashes, Northborough leads at 7.03 per cent and Waltham at 6.92 per cent.

Q: How common are driveway crashes in Massachusetts?

A: 8,658 across 2022 through 2024, which is 2.14 per cent of the 405,239 crashes recorded statewide. 288 of the 349 Massachusetts communities recorded at least one.

Q: Why does Boston have so few driveway crashes?

A: Boston records 39, or 0.22 per cent of its 17,407 crashes, the lowest share of any large community in the state. The explanation that fits, and it is an inference rather than a proven cause, is that a dense city grid has fewer private curb cuts and more signalised junctions, so collisions there are likelier to be recorded as intersection crashes.

Q: Are driveway crashes serious?

A: They are the least harmful junction type per crash in this data. 16.20 per cent recorded an injury against a statewide 22.89 per cent, and the fatal rate is 1.39 per 1,000 against 2.68 statewide. Twelve were fatal across the three years.

Q: Are pedestrians at higher risk at driveways?

A: As a share of crashes, yes. Pedestrians were involved in 2.09 per cent of driveway crashes against 1.48 per cent of Massachusetts crashes generally, and cyclists in 1.82 per cent against 1.07 per cent. A driveway crosses a footway, and a driver waiting for a gap in traffic is looking away from it.

Q: Who is at fault if someone backs out of a driveway and hits me?

A: That is decided on two tracks in Massachusetts, an insurance surcharge decision under the Standards of Fault in 211 CMR 74 and a percentage allocation of legal fault under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, and they do not always agree. The full answer is in who is at fault in a Massachusetts parking lot accident, which covers the standard that reaches driveways.

Q: Does this data cover private home driveways or commercial entrances?

A: Both, without distinguishing them. The source records a driveway as any point where a private way meets a public one, so a supermarket exit and a house driveway carry the same code. That limit should be kept in mind when reading the community table.

Q: Where do these numbers come from?

A: MassDOT IMPACT open crash records for calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, pulled on 2026-09-20 and committed to this site’s repository at measurement/driveway-crash-pull-2026-09-20.json. The statewide totals match an independent pull made on 2026-09-19 exactly, and every community total used as a denominator comes from the same file behind the town pages in the Massachusetts crash report.

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. Crash statistics describe patterns across many collisions and say nothing about who was at fault in any particular one. 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.

Talking to a Lawyer

A driveway case looks small and often is not, and the reason is the mismatch between how these crashes are treated and who tends to get hurt in them.

Because the vehicle damage is usually minor, a driveway collision is the kind an insurer is quickest to characterise as trivial. When the person struck was on foot or on a bicycle, the injury and the property damage bear no relationship to each other at all, and the file can be valued off the wrong one.

The evidence in these cases is also unusually perishable and unusually good when it is captured early. A driveway is almost always somewhere with a camera: a petrol station forecourt, a plaza entrance, an apartment gate. That footage is typically overwritten within days or weeks. Whether a vehicle stopped before the sidewalk, how far it had crept out, and what a driver could actually see past a parked van or a hedge are all questions the footage answers and memory does not.

Where the collision happened on the footway rather than in the roadway, the sight-line question usually matters more than the speed question, and the statutory threshold in M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 6D is rarely the obstacle.

If a crash happened at a driveway in Waltham or Springfield, the two communities carrying the largest counts in the state, the local crash picture for each is on its town page in the crash report, and cyclists can start at bicycle accidents in Waltham.

Fee arrangements in injury work are usually contingent, meaning no fee unless there is a recovery, and the client may be responsible for costs and expenses.

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.