Where Do Crashes Happen in the Merrimack Valley? Three Years of Massachusetts Crash Data

Across the twenty-four Merrimack Valley and Greater Lowell communities, Massachusetts recorded 40,542 crashes from 2022 through 2024, including 89 fatal crashes, 8,893 crashes involving injury, 312 involving a bicycle, and 554 involving a pedestrian. That is ten percent of all crashes in the Commonwealth over those three years, concentrated in a region holding a considerably smaller share of the state’s road mileage. The volume is where you would expect: Lowell alone recorded 7,781 crashes, the sixth-highest total of any of the 349 Massachusetts communities in the data. The lethality is not. Chelmsford, with barely a quarter of Lowell’s crash count, recorded more fatal crashes than Lowell did. That inversion is the most useful thing in this dataset, and it holds across the region: the cities produce the collisions, and the highway towns produce the deaths. Every figure below comes from MassDOT crash records for 2022 through 2024 and can be checked against the town pages in the Massachusetts crash report. To talk through a crash in any of these communities, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the first telephone consultation is free.

How the Region Is Defined, and Where These Numbers Come From

“Merrimack Valley” gets used loosely, so this piece uses a definition anyone can check rather than a feel for where the region starts. It covers the twenty-four communities in the two regional planning agencies that straddle the Merrimack River in Massachusetts:

The fifteen Merrimack Valley Planning Commission communities: Amesbury, Andover, Boxford, Georgetown, Groveland, Haverhill, Lawrence, Merrimac, Methuen, Newbury, Newburyport, North Andover, Rowley, Salisbury, and West Newbury.

The nine Northern Middlesex communities: Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut, Dunstable, Lowell, Pepperell, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, and Westford.

The crash counts come from MassDOT’s open crash data, the record built from Massachusetts crash reports, covering calendar years 2022, 2023, and 2024. That includes the fatal-crash counts, which come from the same MassDOT records rather than from any federal dataset. The road-level counts further down are for 2024, the most recent complete year in the dataset, because road naming in the source data changes enough year over year that stacking three years of it produces noise rather than signal. Statewide, the same three years produced 405,245 crashes, 1,087 fatal crashes, 92,759 crashes involving injury, 4,356 involving a bicycle, and 5,980 involving a pedestrian.

The Count Is in the Three Cities

Ranked by total crashes over the three years, the region breaks into a clear top tier:

Community	Crashes	Fatal	Injury	Statewide crash rank
Lowell	7,781	10	1,765	6th of 349
Lawrence	5,385	5	1,353	11th
Haverhill	4,817	4	961	14th
Methuen	3,409	8	961	24th
Andover	3,302	9	624	27th
Chelmsford	2,108	11	546	49th
Tewksbury	1,806	3	339	56th
Billerica	1,734	6	409	61st
North Andover	1,715	4	307	66th
Westford	1,337	4	199	90th
Dracut	1,335	5	291	91st

Lowell, Lawrence, and Haverhill together account for 17,983 crashes, roughly forty-four percent of the regional total across three cities out of twenty-four communities. Nothing surprising there. Dense street grids, heavy signalized intersections, and the highest traffic volumes in the region produce the most collisions, and most of those collisions are low-speed.

What that ranking hides is that a crash total is a measure of exposure, not of danger. Read alone it tells a Lowell resident that a lot of cars hit each other in Lowell, which they already knew.

Answer Capsule

From 2022 through 2024, the twenty-four Merrimack Valley and Greater Lowell communities recorded 40,542 crashes, 89 of them fatal, 8,893 involving injury, 312 involving a bicycle, and 554 involving a pedestrian, according to MassDOT crash records. That is about ten percent of the statewide total of 405,245 crashes. Lowell had the most crashes in the region at 7,781, sixth-highest among all 349 Massachusetts communities, followed by Lawrence at 5,385 and Haverhill at 4,817. Fatal crashes ran the other way: Chelmsford recorded 11 fatal crashes on 2,108 total crashes, more fatal crashes than Lowell recorded on 7,781. Measured as fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes, the three cities had the lowest ratios of any community in the region that recorded a fatal crash (Haverhill 0.83, Lawrence 0.93, Lowell 1.29) against a statewide average of 2.68, while Chelmsford reached 5.22 and small rural towns ran higher still; Pepperell and Rowley recorded no fatal crash at all over the three years. Lowell also tied New Bedford for sixth statewide in bicycle crashes with 99 and ranked ninth for pedestrian crashes with 179. Town-by-town figures are published at the Massachusetts crash report. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the first telephone consultation is free.

The Lethality Runs the Other Way

Divide fatal crashes by total crashes and the picture inverts completely. Statewide, Massachusetts averaged 2.68 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes over these three years. Here is the same region measured that way, limited to communities with at least 200 crashes so the ratios mean something:

Community	Fatal crashes	Total crashes	Fatal per 1,000
Newbury	4	266	15.04
Merrimac	2	237	8.44
Boxford	3	369	8.13
Chelmsford	11	2,108	5.22
Georgetown	2	439	4.56
Newburyport	3	765	3.92
Dracut	5	1,335	3.75
Billerica	6	1,734	3.46
Amesbury	3	875	3.43
Westford	4	1,337	2.99
Andover	9	3,302	2.73
Methuen	8	3,409	2.35
North Andover	4	1,715	2.33
Tyngsborough	2	917	2.18
Tewksbury	3	1,806	1.66
Salisbury	1	739	1.35
Lowell	10	7,781	1.29
Lawrence	5	5,385	0.93
Haverhill	4	4,817	0.83
Pepperell	0	486	0.00
Rowley	0	237	0.00

That is every one of the twenty-one communities in the region clearing 200 crashes; the three that fall below the floor, Groveland, Dunstable, and West Newbury, recorded no fatal crashes either.

The three cities with the most crashes in the region have the three lowest fatality ratios of any community in the region that recorded a fatal crash, and all three sit well below the state average. Pepperell and Rowley sit lower still, at zero, because neither recorded a fatal crash at all across the three years. Haverhill’s ratio is less than a third of the statewide figure. Meanwhile Chelmsford, a suburban town with a fraction of the traffic, produced eleven fatal crashes, which ties it with Fall River, Charlton, and Gardner for tenth among all 349 Massachusetts communities for fatal crashes while it ranks only forty-ninth for crashes overall.

This is not a mystery, and it is not a comment on anyone’s driving. It is speed and it is road type. City crashes happen at intersections at twenty-five miles an hour with cars pointed in converging directions. Highway and rural-road crashes happen at fifty to seventy with nothing in between the vehicles and no signal cycle imposing order. The energy involved differs by roughly the square of the speed, and the injury outcomes follow.

Notice which towns rise on the fatal-rate list. Chelmsford, Billerica, Dracut, Andover: every one of them carries a major limited-access route through it. Newbury, Boxford, and Merrimac are the other pattern, the rural two-lane road with no median, no shoulder, and no lighting, where the small number of crashes that occur are far more likely to be severe. Newbury recorded four fatal crashes on 266 total crashes.

The Roads Themselves

The town-level road data for 2024 confirms the split. The high-crash roads in the cities are city streets. The high-crash roads in the suburbs are interstates.

One limit belongs before the list rather than after it. The source data carries road-level detail only for communities clearing its threshold of 800 crashes over the three years, which in this region is thirteen of the twenty-four: Amesbury, Andover, Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut, Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, Methuen, North Andover, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, and Westford. Those thirteen account for 36,521 of the region’s 40,542 crashes. The other eleven communities (Boxford, Dunstable, Georgetown, Groveland, Merrimac, Newbury, Newburyport, Pepperell, Rowley, Salisbury, and West Newbury) are included in every town-level figure on this page, and their crashes, fatal crashes, bicycle crashes, and pedestrian crashes all sit inside the regional totals above, but the dataset gives them no road breakdown, so a busy road in one of them would not appear below. The largest of the eleven, Newburyport, recorded 765 crashes across the whole three years, with Salisbury next at 739, which puts a low ceiling on what any single road in those towns could contribute to a one-year ranking. Read the roads that follow as covering the thirteen rather than the twenty-four.

Lowell. Middlesex Street led with 46 crashes in 2024, followed by Bridge Street at 41, Rogers Street at 39, Gorham Street at 36, Chelmsford Street at 34, Westford Street at 29, Plain Street at 27, and the Lowell Connector at 23. Eight entries, and seven of them are surface streets.

Lawrence. Interstate 495 northbound led at 20, then Broadway northbound at 18, Winthrop Avenue southbound at 18, Broadway southbound at 17, Haverhill Street westbound at 16, and Winthrop Avenue northbound at 16.

Haverhill. Washington Street westbound at 20 and eastbound at 18, with Interstate 495 southbound at 18 and northbound at 17 immediately behind, then Route 97 (Broadway) northbound at 17 and southbound at 13.

Methuen. Interstate 93 northbound at 22, the Albert Slack Highway (Route 213) westbound at 18, Broadway at 14, Route 213 eastbound at 13, Interstate 93 southbound at 12, and Haverhill Street at 12. Methuen is the clearest case in the region of a town whose crash profile is dominated by the two highways crossing it.

Andover. North Main Street at 51, Interstate 93 northbound at 41, Lowell Street at 39, Interstate 495 southbound at 31, Main Street at 27, and Interstate 495 northbound at 26. Andover carries both interstates, and both show up.

Chelmsford. Interstate 495 northbound at 37 and southbound at 19, Route 3 southbound at 15, Chelmsford Street at 14, Route 3 northbound at 12, and Drum Hill Road at 10. The town with the region’s highest fatal-crash count has its two highest-crash roads on Interstate 495, in both directions.

Tewksbury. Main Street recorded 169 crashes in 2024, by a wide margin the single highest road total anywhere in the region’s road-level data, followed by Andover Street at 27, Shawsheen Street at 27, Whipple Road at 19, and East Street at 13. Tewksbury’s Main Street is Route 38, a long commercial arterial with a dense run of driveways and turning movements.

Billerica. Boston Road at 45, with three further Boston Road entries at 13, 7, and 7 under different spellings and directional suffixes, then Concord Road at 10 and Route 3 northbound at 9. One corridor carries most of it, and the source records that corridor as Route 3A.

North Andover. Turnpike Street at 90 and Osgood Street at 64, both well ahead of Massachusetts Avenue at 33 and Main Street at 24.

Westford. Littleton Road at 36, then Groton Road, Main Street, and Carlisle Road at 13 each, Boston Road at 12, and Interstate 495 northbound at 12.

Dracut. Lakeview Avenue at 46, Broadway Road at 34, Pleasant Street at 29, and Bridge Street at 26.

Tyngsborough. Middlesex Road at 75, far ahead of Westford Road at 22 and Pawtucket Boulevard at 14.

Amesbury. Macy Street at 34, Haverhill Road at 25, Main Street at 16, and Elm Street at 13, with Interstate 495 appearing at only 5 crashes in each direction. Amesbury is the smallest community in the region that the dataset covers at road level.

Two practical readings come out of this. First, if a case involves Interstate 495 or Interstate 93 through Andover, Chelmsford, Methuen, or Lawrence, it is a high-speed crash on a road where MassDOT and State Police records, not municipal police records, are usually the ones that matter. Interstate 93 in particular runs the length of the state and carries the highest crash count of any single roadway in the records; the Interstate 93 corridor breakdown covers all fourteen communities where it ranks among the worst roads in town, Methuen and Andover included. Second, the arterials that dominate the suburban totals (Route 38 in Tewksbury, Turnpike Street in North Andover, Middlesex Road in Tyngsborough) are commercial strips, which means the useful video after a crash is frequently a business camera, and business camera footage is often overwritten within days.

Lowell Is a Bicycle and Pedestrian Crash Center

One regional number deserves separating out. Lowell recorded 99 bicycle crashes over the three years, tied with New Bedford for sixth-highest of all 349 Massachusetts communities, and 179 pedestrian crashes, ninth-highest. Lawrence recorded 145 pedestrian crashes, eleventh statewide, on 33 bicycle crashes. Haverhill recorded 47 bicycle and 79 pedestrian crashes.

For context, the twenty-four communities together account for 312 bicycle crashes and 554 pedestrian crashes, and Lowell alone is nearly a third of the region’s bicycle total and roughly a third of its pedestrian total. Amesbury is the outlier at the small end: 15 bicycle crashes on only 875 total crashes, a higher bicycle share than any large community in the region.

Vulnerable-road-user crashes follow different legal ground than vehicle-to-vehicle collisions, starting with the fact that a cyclist or pedestrian has no metal around them and the injury severity distribution reflects it. The rules that govern cyclists on Massachusetts roads are set out in Massachusetts bicycle laws, and for riders on motorcycles, the same-lane passing rule that insurers reach for first is covered in is lane splitting legal in Massachusetts.

Which Court Hears a Merrimack Valley Injury Case

The county line runs through this region, and it decides where a case is filed.

Lawrence, Haverhill, Methuen, Andover, North Andover, Amesbury, Newburyport, Salisbury, Boxford, Georgetown, Groveland, Merrimac, Newbury, Rowley, and West Newbury are in Essex County. Civil cases in the superior court go to Essex Superior Court at 56 Federal Street in Salem. In the district court system, Lawrence District Court sits at 381 Common Street in Lawrence, with Haverhill and Newburyport served by their own district courts.

Lowell, Chelmsford, Billerica, Dracut, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Westford, Dunstable, and Pepperell are in Middlesex County. Superior court cases go to Middlesex Superior Court at 200 Trade Center in Woburn. Lowell District Court serves the Lowell area.

Whether a claim proceeds in the district court or the superior court depends on the amount in controversy and other procedural factors, and most claims resolve without a filing in either. The venue still matters early, because it determines the deadlines, the standing orders, and the practical pace once a filing does happen. Claims against a city, a town, the state, or a state agency, which is a live possibility for a crash involving a road defect or a municipal vehicle, carry separate presentment requirements with much shorter clocks than the general three-year tort deadline in M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A. The general deadline landscape is covered in the statute of limitations for personal injury in Massachusetts.

What These Numbers Do Not Say

Data journalism goes wrong when the numbers get asked to answer questions they were not built for, so it is worth being explicit about the limits.

These are crash counts, not rates per mile driven or per resident. A town with more traffic will record more crashes without any individual trip being more dangerous. The fatal-per-1,000 ratios above correct for exposure to crashes but not for exposure to driving.

Fatal-crash counts in small towns are small numbers, and small numbers move. Newbury’s four fatal crashes over three years produce a striking ratio, and a single additional year could change it substantially in either direction. Ratios drawn from communities under 200 crashes were left out of the table for that reason.

Road names come from crash reports filled out at the scene, and the same road can appear under several spellings or with directional suffixes. The counts here follow the source data exactly, which is why some roads appear twice, once per direction. Where they do, both figures are shown rather than silently combined.

None of this establishes fault in any individual crash. A road can carry a heavy crash total and a particular collision on it can still be entirely one driver’s doing, or nobody’s. Massachusetts allocates fault by comparative negligence under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, which reduces damages in proportion to the injured person’s share and bars recovery only when that share is greater than the combined fault of the parties being sued. How that allocation gets made in practice is covered in how fault is determined in a Massachusetts car accident.

The same pattern shows up in other parts of Massachusetts, and the ratios are worth comparing side by side. Bristol County, on the other side of the state, records a higher share of the Commonwealth’s crashes than the Merrimack Valley does but a lower fatal-crash ratio, with the same city-versus-small-town inversion inside it. The figures are in three years of Bristol County crash data.

The county view is worth reading alongside this one, because several of the towns above sit inside it. Middlesex County, which contains Lowell, Chelmsford, Dracut, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, and Billerica, accounts for 20.5 percent of all Massachusetts crashes but 33.5 percent of its bicycle crashes, and it is the venue that determines which court hears a case from any of those towns. The breakdown is in three years of Middlesex County crash data.

Full per-town figures, including every community above, are published at the Massachusetts crash report, with dedicated pages for Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, Methuen, Andover, and Chelmsford. For information on injury claims in the three cities, see car accidents in Lowell, motorcycle accidents in Lowell, bicycle accidents in Lowell, car accidents in Lawrence, and car accidents in Haverhill.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Merrimack Valley community has the most crashes? A: Lowell, with 7,781 crashes from 2022 through 2024, the sixth-highest total among all 349 Massachusetts communities. Lawrence is second in the region at 5,385 and Haverhill third at 4,817.

Q: Which community has the most fatal crashes? A: Chelmsford, with 11 fatal crashes over the three years, one more than Lowell recorded despite Chelmsford having roughly a quarter of Lowell’s total crashes. Andover follows with 9 and Methuen with 8.

Q: Are the cities more dangerous than the suburbs? A: Not by the ratio of fatal crashes to total crashes. Haverhill (0.83 fatal crashes per 1,000), Lawrence (0.93), and Lowell (1.29) all sit well below the statewide average of 2.68, while Chelmsford reaches 5.22 and several small rural towns run higher. Cities produce more crashes at lower speeds; highways and rural roads produce fewer crashes at higher speeds.

Q: Which roads have the most crashes in the region? A: In 2024, Main Street in Tewksbury led at 169 crashes. Turnpike Street in North Andover recorded 90, Middlesex Road in Tyngsborough 75, Osgood Street in North Andover 64, and North Main Street in Andover 51. Interstate 495 and Interstate 93 appear at the top of the lists in Chelmsford, Andover, Methuen, Lawrence, and Haverhill. The dataset carries road-level detail only for the thirteen communities in the region recording at least 800 crashes over the three years, so this ranking covers those thirteen rather than all twenty-four; the eleven smaller communities are still counted in every town-level figure on this page.

Q: How many pedestrian and bicycle crashes happen in the Merrimack Valley? A: Across the twenty-four communities, 554 crashes involved a pedestrian and 312 involved a bicycle over the three years. Lowell accounts for 179 of the pedestrian crashes and 99 of the bicycle crashes, ranking ninth statewide for pedestrian crashes and tied with New Bedford for sixth statewide for bicycle crashes.

Q: Where would a Merrimack Valley injury case be filed? A: It depends on the county and on the amount in controversy. Essex County communities including Lawrence, Haverhill, Methuen, and Andover sit under Essex Superior Court in Salem and their local district courts, including Lawrence District Court. Middlesex County communities including Lowell, Chelmsford, Billerica, and Tewksbury sit under Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn and Lowell District Court. Most claims resolve before any filing.

Q: Where does this crash data come from, and can I check it? A: It comes from MassDOT’s open crash records for 2022 through 2024, including the fatal-crash counts. Every town figure quoted here is published on the town pages at the Massachusetts crash report, and the underlying dataset is publicly available from MassDOT.

Q: Does a high crash count on a road mean the road is at fault for my crash? A: No. Crash totals describe patterns across thousands of collisions and say nothing about who was responsible in any single one. Fault in a Massachusetts injury claim is decided on the specific facts under the comparative negligence rule in M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice? A: No. This is general information about Massachusetts law and publicly available crash data, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. How any rule applies depends entirely on the facts of a specific situation. For advice about a specific matter, speak with a Massachusetts attorney. The Jim Glaser Law line is answered 24 hours a day at (617) JIM-WINS, and the first telephone consultation is free.