Where Are Pedestrians Most Often Hit in Massachusetts?

Ten of the Commonwealth’s 349 cities and towns account for 40.9 per cent of every pedestrian crash in the state. Boston leads on raw count with 491 over three years, followed by Worcester at 327, Lynn at 268, Cambridge at 220 and Springfield at 214. But raw counts mostly measure how busy a place is, and the more useful question is what share of a community’s crashes involve someone on foot. On that measure the ranking rearranges completely: Brookline records 60.11 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes, Salem 51.28, Cambridge 46.08, Chelsea 44.52 and Lynn 44.12, against a statewide figure of 14.76. Boston, which has more pedestrian crashes than any other community by a wide margin, ranks only ninth on that measure. All of these figures come from MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data for calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, counted across all 349 Massachusetts communities. 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.

The Concentration Is the Story

Massachusetts recorded 405,245 crashes over the three years in this dataset. Of those, 5,980 involved a pedestrian, which is 14.76 per 1,000, or roughly one crash in every 68.

Those 5,980 are not spread across the map. Half of them occurred in 15 communities. Eighty per cent occurred in 58. Ninety-three Massachusetts communities, more than a quarter of the Commonwealth, recorded no pedestrian crash at all in three years.

That is a far tighter distribution than crashes generally, and it is worth pausing on why. A car leaving the road at speed can happen anywhere there is a road. A car striking a person on foot requires a person on foot, which means it requires the kind of street where walking is a normal way to get somewhere: a downtown, a transit stop, a commercial strip with housing behind it, a campus. Pedestrian crashes are not distributed like traffic. They are distributed like walking.

The Ten Communities With the Most

Ranked by the number of pedestrian crashes recorded, 2022 through 2024:

Community	Pedestrian crashes	All crashes	Per 1,000 crashes
Boston	491	17,407	28.21
Worcester	327	15,598	20.96
Lynn	268	6,074	44.12
Cambridge	220	4,774	46.08
Springfield	214	11,109	19.26
Fall River	213	9,045	23.55
New Bedford	197	11,070	17.80
Brockton	183	7,378	24.80
Lowell	179	7,781	23.00
Quincy	155	6,455	24.01

Those ten communities produced 2,447 of the state’s 5,980 pedestrian crashes.

Read down the last column, though, and the table starts arguing with itself. Lynn recorded roughly half as many crashes overall as Springfield and more pedestrian crashes. Cambridge recorded barely a quarter of Worcester’s total crashes and two thirds as many pedestrian ones. The count column is telling you where the traffic is. The rate column is telling you something about the streets.

Ranked by Share, the Map Changes

To compare fairly, this article uses only the 116 Massachusetts communities that recorded 1,000 or more crashes over the three years. Below that threshold a single collision swings a rate by several points, and the small towns cannot be meaningfully ranked against each other or against Boston.

Among those 116, ranked by pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes:

Rank	Community	Pedestrian crashes	All crashes	Per 1,000
1	Brookline	74	1,231	60.11
2	Salem	86	1,677	51.28
3	Cambridge	220	4,774	46.08
4	Chelsea	130	2,920	44.52
5	Lynn	268	6,074	44.12
6	Somerville	76	1,999	38.02
7	Malden	104	2,791	37.26
8	Revere	75	2,298	32.64
9	Boston	491	17,407	28.21
10	Lawrence	145	5,385	26.93
11	Amherst	28	1,072	26.12
12	Arlington	28	1,109	25.25

The statewide figure is 14.76, so Brookline runs roughly four times the state rate and the whole top twelve runs well above it.

Two entries on that list are worth flagging because they cut against the easy explanation. Salem sits second, and Salem is neither Boston nor Boston-adjacent; it is a small coastal city with a dense historic downtown and a very large seasonal walking crowd. Amherst sits eleventh, and Amherst is a college town in the Pioneer Valley, about as far from the urban core as the list gets. Whatever is producing these numbers, it is not proximity to Boston.

Testing the Obvious Objection

The obvious response to all of this is that it is population wearing a disguise, and that a list of the places with the most pedestrians is not a finding. That objection is testable against this dataset, and it does not survive.

If density alone drove the rate, communities of comparable size and character would produce comparable numbers. They do not, and the gap is not subtle. Brookline recorded 74 pedestrian crashes out of 1,231. Weston, also an inner-ring suburb, also in the 116 with 2,281 crashes, recorded 3, a rate of 1.32 per 1,000. That is a difference of roughly 45 times between two affluent towns inside the same metropolitan ring. Southborough, with 1,068 crashes, recorded zero pedestrian crashes in three years. Hopkinton recorded 2 out of 1,552.

What separates those places from Brookline is not how many people live there. It is whether the built environment produces people walking across roads. Brookline, Salem, Cambridge, Chelsea and Lynn are gridded, transit-served and mixed-use, with retail at the sidewalk. Weston, Southborough and Hopkinton are not.

The counter-signal deserves the same prominence. Everett is dense, inner-core and transit-served, and it recorded 19 pedestrian crashes out of 964, a rate of 19.71 per 1,000. That is above the state figure and nowhere near its neighbours in Chelsea and Malden. Everett is excluded from the 116-community ranking for falling under the volume threshold, and it is included here precisely because it complicates the story rather than confirming it.

The Inner Core, Measured

Grouping the ten communities of the urban core (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, Malden, Medford, Brookline and Quincy) gives 44,823 crashes and 1,427 pedestrian crashes, a rate of 31.84 per 1,000. Those ten communities carry 23.9 per cent of all pedestrian crashes in Massachusetts.

The other 339 communities together recorded 360,422 crashes and 4,553 pedestrian crashes, a rate of 12.63 per 1,000.

So the core runs roughly two and a half times the rate of the rest of the Commonwealth. That is a real gap and it is smaller than the headline cities suggest, because the core group includes Medford at 20.83 and Everett at 19.71 alongside Brookline at 60.11.

A second cut says something similar. The 116 communities with 1,000 or more crashes account for 89.5 per cent of the state’s pedestrian crashes at a rate of 16.57 per 1,000. The 233 smaller communities account for 10.5 per cent at a rate of 7.62. Pedestrian risk, as this dataset measures it, is more than twice as concentrated in the larger communities, and it is not absent from the smaller ones.

The Trend Is Down, Slightly

It would be easy to write this as a worsening crisis. The dataset does not support that.

Year	Pedestrian crashes	All crashes	Per 1,000
2022	2,029	134,472	15.09
2023	1,995	135,326	14.74
2024	1,956	135,447	14.44

Total crashes held essentially flat across the three years, moving less than one per cent, while pedestrian crashes fell in each year, from 2,029 to 1,956. As a share, the decline runs from 15.09 per 1,000 to 14.44. That is a modest move over a short window and it should not be oversold in either direction, but it runs the opposite way from the narrative that usually accompanies this subject, and it belongs in the article for that reason.

Answer Capsule

Massachusetts recorded 5,980 pedestrian crashes across 2022, 2023 and 2024, out of 405,245 crashes in total, a statewide rate of 14.76 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes. They are heavily concentrated: 15 of the 349 communities account for half of them, 58 account for 80 per cent, and 93 communities recorded none at all. By raw count the leaders are Boston (491), Worcester (327), Lynn (268), Cambridge (220), Springfield (214), Fall River (213), New Bedford (197), Brockton (183), Lowell (179) and Quincy (155), which together are 40.9 per cent of the state total. Measured as a share of each community’s crashes, and limited to the 116 communities with 1,000 or more crashes so small-sample swings do not distort the ranking, the leaders are Brookline (60.11 per 1,000), Salem (51.28), Cambridge (46.08), Chelsea (44.52), Lynn (44.12), Somerville (38.02), Malden (37.26) and Revere (32.64); Boston ranks 9th at 28.21, Worcester 18th at 20.96 and Springfield 24th at 19.26. The pattern is not simply population: Brookline at 60.11 and Weston at 1.32 are both inner-ring suburbs above the volume threshold, and Southborough recorded zero pedestrian crashes out of 1,068. Statewide the count fell each year, from 2,029 in 2022 to 1,956 in 2024, while total crashes stayed flat. All figures are from MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data. The dataset carries no population and no traffic volume, so these are shares of recorded crashes, not per-capita or per-walker risk, and it does not break fatalities out by mode, so no pedestrian fatality figures are given. This is general public-safety information and not legal advice.

What the Data Cannot Tell You

Being explicit about the limits is what makes the rest of it usable.

There is no traffic volume in this dataset and no population. Every rate here is pedestrian crashes as a share of that community’s own crashes, which controls for how busy a place is but does not measure the risk to any individual walking down a particular street. A town can post a high share because it has a lot of walking, because it has streets that handle walking badly, or both, and these numbers cannot separate the two.

There is no breakdown of injury severity by mode. The file carries one fatal-crash count per community covering all crash types, so pedestrian fatalities cannot be pulled out of it, and none are reported here. That all-crash-types fatal count is a usable figure on its own terms, and it produces a geography quite different from this one: the companion article on where the most fatal crashes happen in Massachusetts ranks communities both by fatal count and by the share of crashes that prove fatal, and finds the two rankings almost inverted.

The road-level lists in the dataset are all-crash counts for the most recent year only and are not broken out by mode, which is why this article names no street as a pedestrian danger. Doing so would be an inference the data does not carry.

And a crash is a reported crash. Collisions that generate no police report do not appear, which is a known and unmeasurable floor under every count in the file.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Massachusetts city has the most pedestrian crashes?

A: Boston, with 491 recorded across 2022, 2023 and 2024, more than any other community by a wide margin. Worcester is second at 327 and Lynn third at 268. Boston also has the largest total crash count in the Commonwealth at 17,407, so its lead on raw numbers is partly a function of scale; measured as a share of its own crashes it ranks ninth among the 116 communities with 1,000 or more crashes.

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

A: Among the 116 Massachusetts communities with 1,000 or more crashes in the three-year file, Brookline, at 60.11 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes, which is roughly four times the statewide 14.76. Salem follows at 51.28, Cambridge at 46.08, Chelsea at 44.52 and Lynn at 44.12. Communities under the 1,000-crash threshold are excluded because a single crash moves their rate by several points.

Q: Are pedestrian crashes getting worse in Massachusetts?

A: Not in this three-year window. Recorded pedestrian crashes fell from 2,029 in 2022 to 1,995 in 2023 to 1,956 in 2024, while total crashes stayed nearly flat at about 135,000 a year. As a share of all crashes the figure moved from 15.09 per 1,000 to 14.44. Three years is a short window and this is not a projection, but the dataset does not show an increase. Bicycle crashes in the same file moved the other way over the same three years, rising from 1,353 to 1,581, and the companion article on which Massachusetts city has the most bicycle crashes sets out that pattern and the towns it concentrates in.

Q: Is this just a measure of population density?

A: Density is clearly part of it, and it is not the whole explanation. The measure used here is already a share of each town’s own crashes rather than a raw count, and comparable towns still land far apart. Brookline recorded 74 pedestrian crashes out of 1,231 while Weston recorded 3 out of 2,281, and Southborough recorded none out of 1,068. All three are inner-ring suburbs above the volume threshold. Everett runs the other way, at 19.71 per 1,000 despite being dense and transit-served.

Q: How many Massachusetts towns have no pedestrian crashes at all?

A: Ninety-three of the 349 communities recorded zero pedestrian crashes across the full three years. Those are overwhelmingly small communities; the 233 communities with fewer than 1,000 total crashes account for only 10.5 per cent of the state’s pedestrian crashes.

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. The figures here were computed by summing the per-community pedestrian and total crash counts.

Q: Does a high pedestrian crash rate in my city help my claim?

A: No. Fault in a Massachusetts crash is decided on the facts of the specific collision: where each party was, what the signals and markings showed, sight lines, speed and the accounts of the people involved. Massachusetts apportions fault between the parties, so the analysis is about that intersection on that day. Town-level statistics describe a pattern across thousands of crashes and have no evidentiary role in an individual case, in either direction.

Q: What should someone do after a pedestrian crash in Massachusetts?

A: Get medical attention, because pedestrian injuries commonly present later than they are felt at the scene, and make sure a police report exists. Photograph the location, including signals, crosswalk markings and sight lines, since those change. Get contact details for witnesses, who are often on foot and gone within minutes. The rights and deadlines that follow are covered in the companion article on pedestrian accident rights in Massachusetts.

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. 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.

Talking to a Lawyer

The practical value of a table like this is not that it tells you where to walk. It is that it describes what a pedestrian case usually is. A collision in Brookline, Salem, Cambridge, Chelsea or Lynn is far more likely to be a low-speed urban impact at an intersection or a marked crossing than a highway event, and cases of that shape turn on evidence that disappears quickly: signal timing, sight lines obstructed by a parked truck, a crosswalk whose markings have worn, and witnesses who were themselves on foot and did not leave a name.

Jim Glaser Law takes calls about Massachusetts crashes, including crashes involving pedestrians. The full crash record for the communities named here is published on this site: Boston, Worcester, Lynn, Cambridge, Springfield, Fall River, New Bedford, Brockton, Lowell, Quincy, Brookline, Salem, Chelsea, Somerville, Malden and Revere. For every other community in the Commonwealth, start at the Massachusetts crash report. Local pages for the firm’s auto accident practice include Boston, Worcester, Lynn, Cambridge, Lowell and Quincy. The line at (617) JIM-WINS is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.