Which Massachusetts Cities Have the Most Injury Crashes?

Boston records more injury crashes than any other community in Massachusetts, 4,534 across 2022, 2023 and 2024, followed by Springfield with 3,783 and Worcester with 3,276, according to MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data. The count is the smaller part of the story. Statewide, 228.9 of every 1,000 crashes involved an injury, a little under one in four. In Brockton the figure is 352.9 and in Springfield 340.5, better than one in three. Springfield recorded 4,489 fewer crashes than Worcester and still recorded 507 more injury crashes. And the pattern runs in the opposite direction from fatal crashes: the bigger and denser the community, the more likely a crash is to hurt someone, while the smaller the community, the more likely it is to kill. Every figure below covers all 349 Massachusetts communities. If you were hurt in a 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 an Injury Crash Here

MassDOT records a severity for every crash, taken from the crash report. In the figures on this page, an injury crash is one recorded as a non-fatal injury crash. Fatal crashes are counted separately, 1,087 of them statewide, and are not included in the injury figure.

Two consequences of that definition are worth keeping in mind. First, these are counts of crashes, not of injured people. A single crash that sends three people to the hospital is one injury crash. Second, crashes whose severity was not reported or was recorded as unknown are included in the total crash count but not in the injury count. That means every injury share below is a floor. The true share of crashes involving an injury is at least this high and may be somewhat higher.

Across the three years, Massachusetts recorded 405,239 crashes, of which 92,760 were injury crashes. That is 228.9 per 1,000, the benchmark for every local figure that follows.

The Communities With the Most Injury Crashes

Community	Injury crashes	All crashes	Injury crashes per 1,000
Boston	4,534	17,407	260.5
Springfield	3,783	11,109	340.5
Worcester	3,276	15,598	210.0
Brockton	2,604	7,378	352.9
New Bedford	2,330	11,070	210.5
Fall River	2,286	9,045	252.7
Lowell	1,765	7,781	226.8
Lynn	1,694	6,074	278.9
Lawrence	1,353	5,385	251.3
Quincy	1,308	6,455	202.6

Those ten communities account for 24,933 injury crashes, 26.9 per cent of the statewide total, on 24.0 per cent of all crashes. The big cities carry slightly more than their share of injury crashes, which is the first sign of the pattern this page is about.

Springfield and Worcester

The single most useful comparison in the table is between the Commonwealth’s second and third cities.

Worcester recorded 15,598 crashes over the three years, more than any community except Boston. Springfield recorded 11,109. Yet Springfield recorded 3,783 injury crashes to Worcester’s 3,276. A crash in Springfield was about 62 per cent more likely to be recorded as an injury crash than a crash in Worcester: 340.5 per 1,000 against 210.0.

The same thing shows up on the South Coast. New Bedford recorded 11,070 crashes and 2,330 injury crashes. Fall River recorded 2,025 fewer crashes and only 44 fewer injury crashes, 2,286 in all.

These are not small differences, and they are not explained by size, since each pair is closely matched. What differs is the kind of crash that dominates. That points to the road network, the mix of traffic and pedestrians, and, as discussed below, how injuries are recorded.

Answer Capsule

Boston has the most injury crashes in Massachusetts, 4,534 recorded across 2022 to 2024 in MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data, followed by Springfield at 3,783 and Worcester at 3,276. Statewide, 92,760 of 405,239 crashes involved a non-fatal injury, 228.9 per 1,000. Among the 189 communities with at least 500 crashes, the share is highest in Brockton at 352.9 per 1,000 and Springfield at 340.5, and lowest in Marblehead at 127.2 and Gardner at 146.8. The injury share rises with community size, from about 218 per 1,000 in communities with under 1,000 crashes to 252.4 in the five largest, which is the reverse of the fatal pattern, where small towns have the highest share of crashes that kill. Somerville recorded no fatal crash in three years but 312.7 injury crashes per 1,000, eighth highest in the state. In Massachusetts, any crash in which someone is injured must be reported in writing within five days under M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 26. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Where a Crash Is Most Likely to Injure Someone

Ranked by share rather than count, and restricted to the 189 communities with at least 500 crashes so that a handful of crashes cannot produce a meaningless ratio, the list changes.

Community	Injury crashes per 1,000	Injury crashes	All crashes
Brockton	352.9	2,604	7,378
Springfield	340.5	3,783	11,109
Westfield	338.5	631	1,864
Milton	334.9	715	2,135
Dartmouth	323.3	570	1,763
Everett	318.5	307	964
Rockland	315.2	255	809
Somerville	312.7	625	1,999
Granby	312.4	169	541
Revere	309.8	712	2,298

At the other end, the lowest shares among those 189 communities are Marblehead at 127.2, Gardner at 146.8, Westford at 148.8, Ware at 149.2, Fitchburg at 151.0 and Great Barrington at 152.2. A crash in Brockton was nearly three times as likely to be recorded as an injury crash as a crash in Marblehead.

The Opposite of the Fatal Pattern

This site’s fatal crash analysis found that the share of crashes that prove fatal is highest in small towns and lowest in the dense, high-volume cities. Injury crashes do not follow that pattern. They run the other way.

Grouping all 349 communities by how many crashes they recorded makes it visible:

Crashes in 2022 to 2024	Communities	Injury per 1,000	Fatal per 1,000
Under 500	160	218.5	5.50
500 to 999	73	217.6	3.34
1,000 to 1,999	65	222.4	2.92
2,000 to 3,999	33	224.5	2.02
4,000 to 7,999	13	234.6	1.75
8,000 and over	5	252.4	2.54

Read down the injury column and it climbs steadily with size. Read down the fatal column and it falls steadily, until the last row. That last group holds only five cities, and the fatal figure turns up there because two of them, Boston at 3.73 and Springfield at 3.96, run above the statewide fatal rate of 2.68, while Worcester, New Bedford and Fall River all run well below it.

Two individual communities show the contrast more sharply than any table. Somerville recorded 1,999 crashes and not one fatal crash in three years, yet 312.7 of every 1,000 of its crashes involved an injury, the eighth-highest share in the state. Gardner recorded 11 fatal crashes, a fatal rate of 7.12 per 1,000 that is among the highest in the Commonwealth, and the second-lowest injury share of any community its size, 146.8.

The explanation most consistent with the numbers is speed and the kind of collision each road network produces. Dense urban streets generate a great many low-speed collisions, and a large share of them involve pedestrians, cyclists, crossing traffic and side impacts at intersections. Those crashes injure people often and kill them rarely. Rural and semi-rural roads generate fewer crashes, and those that happen are more likely to be higher-speed crashes that either do little harm or do the worst harm.

Are Injury Crashes Rising?

Slightly. Injury crashes went from 30,611 in 2022 to 30,987 in 2023 and 31,162 in 2024, a rise of 1.8 per cent, while total crashes rose 0.7 per cent. As a share, that is 227.6 per 1,000, then 229.0, then 230.1. The direction has been consistent for three years, but the change is small and three years is a short window. It is fairer to say injury crashes have held steady with a slight upward drift than to call it a trend.

What These Numbers Cannot Tell You

Three limits apply to every figure on this page.

A share is not a risk. Injury crashes per 1,000 crashes describes how often a crash, once it happens, involves an injury. It does not describe how likely anyone is to crash. The dataset has no miles driven and no population figures, so it cannot say that driving in Brockton is more dangerous than driving in Marblehead.

Injury coding comes from crash reports. The severity recorded for a crash reflects what was known and written down at the time. Reporting practice can differ between police departments, and an injury that is not apparent at the scene may never be recorded as one. Some of the difference between two communities may be a difference in how injuries are recorded rather than in how many people were hurt.

One grouping runs against the grain of the town-by-town table above and is worth reading next. The 26 municipalities the Commonwealth designates as Gateway Cities record 246.20 injury crashes per 1,000 against 220.05 in the rest of Massachusetts, while running well below the rest of the state on fatal crashes at 1.98 per 1,000 against 3.04: Gateway Cities crash data in Massachusetts.

Where a crash happens points the same way. Crashes at an intersection record an injury 26.85 per cent of the time against 20.99 per cent for crashes away from a junction, while their fatal rate runs lower at 1.98 per 1,000 against 3.28, and the communities where that burden concentrates are ranked in Massachusetts intersection crash data by community.

A crash record does not decide fault or injury in any individual case. Whether a particular crash was recorded as an injury crash does not decide whether a person was injured, and says nothing about who was responsible. Both are decided on the evidence of that crash.

What an Injury Crash Sets in Motion in Massachusetts

Several legal duties and rights attach the moment someone is hurt in a crash.

The five-day report. M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 26 requires every operator of a vehicle “involved in an accident in which any person is killed or injured or in which there is damage in excess of one thousand dollars to any one vehicle or other property” to report in writing to the registrar within five days, and to send a copy to the police department where the crash happened. The requirement pauses while a person is physically unable to make the report. The article on reporting a car accident in Massachusetts explains the forms and the separate police report.

Personal injury protection. Under M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 34A, a Massachusetts auto policy pays personal injury protection benefits to people injured in, entering, leaving or struck as a pedestrian by the insured vehicle, “without regard to negligence or gross negligence or fault of any kind, to the amount or limit of at least eight thousand dollars” for any one person. Those benefits cover medical expenses and lost wages and do not depend on who caused the crash. The PIP article sets out how the $8,000 coordinates with health insurance.

The threshold for pain and suffering. A claim against the at-fault driver for pain and suffering is available under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 6D only where reasonable and necessary medical expenses exceed two thousand dollars, or where the injury causes death, loss of a body member, permanent and serious disfigurement, specified loss of sight or hearing, or consists of a fracture. The serious injury threshold article explains how that works in practice.

Community-level figures for every town in the Commonwealth, including the roads with the most crashes in each, are on the Massachusetts crash report. Pages for injured drivers and passengers in the communities with the most injury crashes are available for Boston, Springfield, Worcester, Brockton, Lynn and Somerville. Pedestrian injuries follow their own geography, set out in the Massachusetts pedestrian crash data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Massachusetts city has the most car accidents with injuries?

A: Boston, with 4,534 injury crashes recorded across 2022, 2023 and 2024 in MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data. Springfield is second with 3,783 and Worcester third with 3,276, followed by Brockton, New Bedford, Fall River, Lowell, Lynn, Lawrence and Quincy. Those ten communities account for 26.9 per cent of all injury crashes in the Commonwealth.

Q: What percentage of Massachusetts car crashes involve an injury?

A: About 23 per cent. Of 405,239 crashes recorded statewide across 2022 to 2024, 92,760 were recorded as non-fatal injury crashes, which is 228.9 per 1,000. Because crashes with an unknown or unreported severity are counted in the total but not as injury crashes, the real share is at least that high.

Q: In which Massachusetts city is a crash most likely to cause an injury?

A: Among communities with at least 500 crashes over the three years, Brockton has the highest share at 352.9 injury crashes per 1,000, followed by Springfield at 340.5, Westfield at 338.5 and Milton at 334.9. That measures how often a crash involves an injury once it happens, not how likely anyone is to crash there.

Q: Why does Springfield have more injury crashes than Worcester?

A: Not because it has more crashes. Worcester recorded 15,598 crashes and Springfield 11,109, but Springfield recorded 3,783 injury crashes to Worcester’s 3,276. A Springfield crash was about 62 per cent more likely to be recorded as an injury crash. The difference reflects the kind of crash each city’s road network produces and may also partly reflect differences in how injuries are recorded.

Q: Are injury crashes and fatal crashes found in the same places?

A: No, and in some ways they are opposites. The injury share rises with community size, from about 218 per 1,000 in communities with under 1,000 crashes to 252.4 in the five largest, while the fatal share is highest in small towns. Somerville had no fatal crash in three years but one of the highest injury shares in the state; Gardner has one of the highest fatal rates and one of the lowest injury shares.

Q: Are injury crashes increasing in Massachusetts?

A: Only slightly. They rose from 30,611 in 2022 to 30,987 in 2023 and 31,162 in 2024, up 1.8 per cent, while total crashes rose 0.7 per cent. Three years is too short a period to describe that as a firm trend.

Q: Do I have to report a crash in Massachusetts if someone was hurt?

A: Yes. M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 26 requires the operator of every vehicle involved in a crash in which anyone is killed or injured, or in which any one vehicle or other property is damaged by more than one thousand dollars, to report in writing to the registrar within five days and send a copy to the local police department. The deadline does not run while the operator is physically unable to make the report.

Q: Will my own insurance pay my medical bills after an injury crash in Massachusetts?

A: Your auto policy’s personal injury protection pays medical expenses and lost wages up to at least $8,000 per person, without regard to fault, under M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 34A. Where you also have health insurance, the two coordinate, and losses beyond PIP, including pain and suffering where the c. 231, sec. 6D threshold is met, are claimed against the at-fault driver.

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 injury in any particular crash, which depend 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.