Where Do the Most Fatal Crashes Happen in Massachusetts?

Boston records more fatal crashes than any other community in Massachusetts, 65 of them across 2022, 2023 and 2024, followed by Springfield with 44 and Worcester with 29. That is the answer to the question as asked, and on its own it is misleading. Boston also records more crashes of every kind than anywhere else, 17,407 in the same three years, so a high fatal count is partly just a consequence of volume. Measured the other way, as the share of crashes that turn out to be fatal, Boston is not close to the top and several small towns are three times worse than the statewide figure. The full picture takes both numbers. Every figure below comes from MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data for calendar years 2022 through 2024, covering all 349 Massachusetts communities. If you have lost someone in a crash and need to understand what a claim involves, 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 Statewide Picture First

Across the three years, Massachusetts recorded 405,239 reported crashes. Of those, 1,087 were fatal and 92,760 involved an injury.

That works out to a statewide rate of 2.68 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes. It is the number every local figure below should be read against, because it is the only way to tell whether a community is unusual or just large.

Year by year, the totals barely move but the fatalities do:

Year	Crashes	Fatal crashes
2022	134,472	413
2023	135,326	324
2024	135,441	350

Crash volume is almost perfectly flat across the three years, varying by less than one per cent. Fatal crashes fell 22 per cent from 2022 to 2023, then rose again in 2024. Three years is not long enough to call that a trend, and the honest reading is that the fatal count moves substantially year to year while the underlying crash count does not.

Where the Most Fatal Crashes Happen, by Count

These are the ten communities with the highest number of fatal crashes from 2022 through 2024.

Community	Fatal crashes	All crashes	Fatal per 1,000
Boston	65	17,407	3.73
Springfield	44	11,109	3.96
Worcester	29	15,598	1.86
Chicopee	22	5,238	4.20
Brockton	20	7,378	2.71
New Bedford	14	11,070	1.26
Barnstable	13	3,703	3.51
Taunton	12	6,644	1.81
Holyoke	12	4,245	2.83
Fall River	11	9,045	1.22

Those ten communities account for 242 fatal crashes, which is 22.3 per cent of the statewide total of 1,087. Roughly a fifth of the Commonwealth’s fatal crashes happen in ten places out of 349.

Look down the right-hand column, though, and the list starts to come apart. Worcester, New Bedford, Taunton and Fall River all appear in the top ten for fatal crashes while sitting well below the statewide rate of 2.68. Fall River is at 1.22, less than half the statewide figure. They are on this list because they are big, not because a crash there is unusually likely to be fatal.

Answer Capsule

Boston records the most fatal crashes in Massachusetts, 65 across 2022 to 2024, ahead of Springfield at 44 and Worcester at 29, according to MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data. The top ten communities account for 242 of the statewide 1,087 fatal crashes, or 22.3 per cent. Ranked instead by the share of crashes that prove fatal, the picture inverts: the statewide rate is 2.68 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes, and the highest rates among communities with at least 500 crashes are in small towns, led by Carver at 7.86, Lakeville at 7.82 and Lancaster at 7.59, roughly three times the statewide figure. Several of the highest-volume cities have among the lowest rates, including Lawrence at 0.93, Quincy at 1.08 and Fall River at 1.22. Eighty-one of the 349 communities recorded no fatal crash at all in the three years, including Somerville, which had 1,999 crashes and none of them fatal. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Where a Crash Is Most Likely to Be Fatal

This is the more useful question, and it produces a completely different list.

The measure is fatal crashes as a share of all crashes in the same community. To keep the denominator meaningful, the table below is restricted to the 189 communities that recorded at least 500 crashes over the three years. Without that restriction the list is dominated by very small towns where a single fatal crash against a handful of total crashes produces an enormous ratio that means nothing.

Community	Fatal per 1,000 crashes	Fatal	All crashes
Carver	7.86	5	636
Lakeville	7.82	5	639
Lancaster	7.59	6	791
Great Barrington	7.25	4	552
Littleton	7.19	7	973
Duxbury	7.17	5	697
Gardner	7.12	11	1,546
Bedford	7.09	5	705
Freetown	7.01	5	713
Plainville	6.79	5	736

Every community on that list runs at roughly two and a half to three times the statewide rate of 2.68. None of them is a city. Gardner is the largest by crash volume at 1,546, which is under a tenth of Boston’s.

Now compare the other end. Among the twelve communities with the highest crash volume in the Commonwealth, these are the lowest fatal rates:

Community	Fatal per 1,000 crashes	Fatal	All crashes
Lawrence	0.93	5	5,385
Quincy	1.08	7	6,455
Fall River	1.22	11	9,045
New Bedford	1.26	14	11,070
Lowell	1.29	10	7,781
Lynn	1.48	9	6,074

Lawrence recorded 5,385 crashes and 5 fatal ones. Carver recorded 636 crashes and 5 fatal ones. Same number of deaths, eight times the crashes.

What That Difference Does and Does Not Prove

The pattern is consistent enough to be worth stating plainly: crashes in dense urban areas are far less likely to be fatal than crashes in rural and semi-rural towns, and the gap is large.

The explanation most consistent with the data is speed and road type. Dense city networks produce enormous numbers of low-speed collisions at intersections, in traffic and in parking areas, most of which are survivable. Rural and semi-rural towns produce fewer crashes overall, but a larger share of them happen on higher-speed two-lane roads, including head-on and fixed-object crashes, which are the crash types that kill people.

Two limits on all of this deserve to be said out loud rather than buried.

This is a severity ratio, not a measure of risk. Fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes tells you how dangerous a crash is once it happens. It does not tell you how likely you are to crash. The dataset has no exposure denominator, no vehicle miles travelled and no population figures, so it cannot answer whether driving in Carver is more dangerous than driving in Lawrence. Anyone using these numbers to say small towns are more dangerous than cities is claiming more than the data supports.

Small numbers move sharply. Carver’s rate rests on 5 fatal crashes. A single additional or absent crash moves that figure by roughly 1.6 points, which would reorder the table. The 500-crash floor reduces this problem but does not eliminate it, and the rankings within the top ten should be treated as approximate.

The Eighty-One Communities With No Fatal Crash At All

Of the 349 communities in the dataset, 81 recorded zero fatal crashes across the entire three years. Together those 81 accounted for 20,674 crashes.

Most are small. Some are not. Westborough recorded 2,182 crashes and no fatal one. Somerville recorded 1,999 crashes and no fatal one, which for one of the most densely populated municipalities in the country is a genuinely striking figure and the strongest single illustration of the urban pattern above. Hudson recorded 1,245, East Bridgewater 1,148, Dennis 1,047 and Belmont 935, all with no fatal crash.

The Roads Rather Than the Towns

MassDOT’s 2024 road-level data ranks individual named roads by fatal crashes, and one entry sits clear at the top: Interstate 495 northbound, with 9 fatal crashes in a single year. No other road segment in the Commonwealth is close.

Behind it, four segments tie at 3: Interstate 93 northbound, the Massachusetts Turnpike westbound, the Pilgrim Highway (Route 3) southbound, and South Street. A further group sits at 2, including Washington Street where it carries US 1 in both directions, Massachusetts Avenue, the Yankee Division Highway (Route 128) southbound, Randolph Avenue where it carries Route 28, Lowell Street where it carries Route 110, and Interstates 91, 195, 290 and 495 southbound.

The interstates dominate that list in a way they do not dominate the ordinary crash list, where roads named Main Street lead the Commonwealth by a wide margin. That is the same severity effect as the town comparison, seen from the road side: limited-access highways produce a smaller share of total crashes and a much larger share of fatal ones. The Interstate 495 corridor data covers that road in detail.

If You Have Lost Someone

A fatal crash produces a different kind of legal claim from an injury crash, and it runs on different rules. In Massachusetts a wrongful death claim is brought by the personal representative of the estate rather than by family members individually, and the categories of recoverable loss are set by statute. The deadlines are not the same as those in an ordinary injury case either. The wrongful death claim article sets out how the claim is structured and who may bring it.

Community-level figures for every town in the Commonwealth, including the roads with the most crashes in each, are on the Massachusetts crash report. Practice-area pages for the communities with the most fatal crashes are available for Boston, Springfield, Worcester, Brockton, New Bedford and Fall River. Pedestrian deaths follow a different geographic pattern again, set out in the Massachusetts pedestrian crash data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which city in Massachusetts has the most fatal car crashes?

A: Boston, with 65 fatal crashes recorded across 2022, 2023 and 2024 in MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data. Springfield is second with 44 and Worcester third with 29. Boston also has the highest overall crash volume in the Commonwealth at 17,407 over the same period, so a large part of the fatal count reflects the sheer number of crashes rather than an unusually high level of danger. Boston’s fatal rate is 3.73 per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 2.68.

Q: What is the most dangerous town in Massachusetts to have a crash in?

A: Measured as the share of crashes that prove fatal, and restricted to communities with at least 500 crashes so the ratio is meaningful, Carver has the highest rate at 7.86 fatal crashes per 1,000, from 5 fatal crashes out of 636. Lakeville follows at 7.82 and Lancaster at 7.59. All three run at roughly three times the statewide rate of 2.68. That said, this measures how severe a crash tends to be, not how likely you are to be in one, because the dataset contains no measure of how much driving happens in each town.

Q: How many fatal crashes happen in Massachusetts each year?

A: Between 324 and 413 per year over the period measured: 413 in 2022, 324 in 2023 and 350 in 2024, for 1,087 across the three years. Total crashes were almost identical each year, between 134,472 and 135,441, so the fatal count varies considerably while the underlying crash volume does not. Three years is too short a window to describe that variation as a trend in either direction.

Q: Which road has the most fatal crashes in Massachusetts?

A: In the 2024 road-level data, Interstate 495 northbound leads clearly with 9 fatal crashes, ahead of a group at 3 that includes Interstate 93 northbound, the Massachusetts Turnpike westbound, the Pilgrim Highway (Route 3) southbound and South Street. Interstates are disproportionately represented on the fatal list compared with the ordinary crash list, where local roads named Main Street carry by far the most crashes. Higher speeds produce fewer crashes but more severe ones.

Q: Are city crashes less dangerous than rural crashes in Massachusetts?

A: The data shows a consistent difference in severity. Lawrence recorded 5,385 crashes and 5 fatal ones, a rate of 0.93 per 1,000. Carver recorded 636 crashes and the same 5 fatal ones, a rate of 7.86. Quincy, Fall River, New Bedford, Lowell and Lynn all sit at or under 1.5 despite very high crash volumes. The likely explanation is speed and road type: dense street networks generate many low-speed collisions, while rural roads generate fewer crashes at higher speeds. What the figures cannot tell you is your risk of crashing in the first place, because the dataset measures crashes, not miles driven.

Q: Are there places in Massachusetts with no fatal crashes at all?

A: Yes, and more than most people expect. Eighty-one of the 349 communities in the dataset recorded no fatal crash across the full three years, together accounting for 20,674 crashes. Several are substantial: Westborough recorded 2,182 crashes with no fatality, and Somerville recorded 1,999 with none, despite being one of the most densely populated municipalities in the United States.

Q: Where does this crash data come from?

A: MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data, the Commonwealth’s public crash database, covering calendar years 2022 through 2024 and all 349 Massachusetts communities. Fatal counts are crashes recorded in that database with a severity of fatal injury. They are not drawn from the federal NHTSA fatality reporting system, which uses a different collection method and can produce different totals for the same period, so figures here should not be compared directly against federal ones.

Q: Does a fatal crash claim work differently from an injury claim in Massachusetts?

A: Yes, in several structural ways. A wrongful death claim in Massachusetts is brought by the personal representative of the deceased person’s estate rather than by relatives in their own names, the categories of recoverable loss are set by statute rather than left open, and the timing rules differ from those in an ordinary personal injury case. The practical first step is usually appointment of the personal representative, because until that happens there is no one with standing to bring the claim.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice?

A: No, general information only. Jimmy Knows AI explains how Massachusetts law works in plain language and reports public crash data as published; it does not give legal advice and does not review your situation. The statistics on this page describe patterns across the Commonwealth and say nothing about fault or liability in any particular crash, which depends entirely on its own facts. Nothing here creates an attorney client relationship. For advice on your own situation, speak with a Massachusetts lawyer. Jim Glaser Law can be reached at (617) JIM-WINS.