What Do the Crash Numbers Show on the Massachusetts North Shore?

They show a region that produces far more crashes involving people on foot than the rest of Massachusetts and far fewer deaths. The 19 communities of the North Shore recorded 22,332 crashes from 2022 through 2024 in MassDOT records, which is 5.51 percent of the 405,239 crashes in the Commonwealth over those three years. Their share of pedestrian crashes is 8.70 percent, well above their share of crashes, and their share of fatal crashes is 4.05 percent, well below it. As rates, the North Shore runs 23.28 crashes involving a pedestrian per 1,000 crashes against 14.26 in the rest of the state, and 1.97 fatal crashes per 1,000 against 2.72. The spread inside the region is larger than the gap between the region and the state: Salem records 51.28 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 and four communities record none at all, while Lynn, which has more crashes than anywhere else on the North Shore at 6,074, has one of its lowest fatal rates at 1.48 per 1,000. Every figure here comes from MassDOT crash records and can be checked town by town in the Massachusetts crash report. 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.

Which Communities This Covers

There is no statutory boundary for the North Shore, so this article uses the 19 coastal and southern Essex County communities that the name is ordinarily understood to mean: Lynn, Peabody, Saugus, Gloucester, Salem, Beverly, Danvers, Lynnfield, Marblehead, Middleton, Ipswich, Swampscott, Topsfield, Hamilton, Rockport, Wenham, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Essex and Nahant.

The inland and northern Essex towns are not counted here, because they are covered separately in the Merrimack Valley crash data, which takes Haverhill, Lawrence, Methuen, Andover, North Andover, Newburyport and their neighbours. No community appears in both articles.

Three of the 19, Lynn, Salem and Peabody, are also Gateway Cities, and their pedestrian figures appear in the Gateway Cities crash data. That article is about an economic designation across the state. This one is about a region, and 16 of its 19 communities are not Gateway Cities at all.

The Region Against the Rest of Massachusetts

Measure	North Shore	Rest of Massachusetts
Crashes, 2022 to 2024	22,332	382,907
Fatal crashes	44	1,043
Injury crashes	5,456	87,304
Pedestrian crashes	520	5,460
Bicycle crashes	287	4,069
Pedestrian crashes per 1,000	23.28	14.26
Fatal crashes per 1,000	1.97	2.72
Injury crashes per 1,000	244.31	228.00
Bicycle crashes per 1,000	12.85	10.63

Two of those rows point in opposite directions, and that is the finding.

A crash on the North Shore is about 63 percent more likely to involve somebody on foot than a crash elsewhere in Massachusetts, and about 21 percent more likely to involve somebody on a bicycle. It is about 28 percent less likely to be fatal.

That shape is not unusual once you know what produces it. Dense old street grids with short blocks, on-street parking, and a great deal of walking generate a lot of low-speed collisions, and a high proportion of those involve a person outside a vehicle. The same conditions keep speeds down, and speed is what turns a collision into a fatality. The North Shore has an unusual amount of that kind of road: downtowns laid out before cars, a working waterfront in several towns, and summer foot traffic in others.

Answer Capsule

The 19 communities of the Massachusetts North Shore recorded 22,332 crashes from 2022 through 2024 in MassDOT records, including 44 fatal, 5,456 injury, 520 involving a pedestrian and 287 involving a bicycle. That is 5.51 percent of all Massachusetts crashes, 8.70 percent of the state’s pedestrian crashes and 4.05 percent of its fatal crashes. As rates, the region runs 23.28 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes against 14.26 in the rest of the state, 12.85 bicycle crashes per 1,000 against 10.63, and 1.97 fatal crashes per 1,000 against 2.72. Lynn has the most crashes at 6,074, tenth among all 349 Massachusetts communities, followed by Peabody at 3,746, Saugus at 2,063, Gloucester at 1,726, Salem at 1,677 and Beverly at 1,618. Salem has the region’s highest pedestrian rate at 51.28 per 1,000 and its highest bicycle rate at 26.24; Topsfield, Hamilton, Wenham and Essex recorded no pedestrian crashes at all over the three years. The fatal rates at the top of the region rest on very small counts and should be read with that in mind.

Town by Town

Ranks are among all 349 Massachusetts communities in the dataset.

Community	Rank	Crashes	Fatal	Injury	Bicycle	Pedestrian	Ped per 1,000
Lynn	10	6,074	9	1,694	94	268	44.12
Peabody	20	3,746	5	847	30	41	10.95
Saugus	50	2,063	2	638	15	27	13.09
Gloucester	62	1,726	1	286	21	25	14.48
Salem	69	1,677	6	457	44	86	51.28
Beverly	70	1,618	2	320	26	27	16.69
Danvers	92	1,331	2	387	9	16	12.02
Lynnfield	143	801	3	183	3	3	3.75
Marblehead	166	637	2	81	13	6	9.42
Middleton	174	584	2	115	1	1	1.71
Ipswich	187	525	2	90	8	2	3.81
Swampscott	204	421	0	108	10	10	23.75
Topsfield	230	294	4	88	1	0	0.00
Hamilton	248	209	1	36	3	0	0.00
Wenham	264	160	0	38	1	0	0.00
Rockport	265	160	2	33	1	6	37.50
Manchester-by-the-Sea	273	137	1	30	3	1	7.30
Essex	280	108	0	16	2	0	0.00
Nahant	300	61	0	9	2	1	16.39

The eight communities with a linked name have their own town page in the Massachusetts crash report, with the full breakdown and the town’s highest-crash roads. The remaining eleven are below the report’s minimum crash threshold for a town page, so their figures appear here and not there.

Lynn Is the Region’s Largest Number and Its Most Misread One

Lynn recorded 6,074 crashes over the three years, which is tenth out of 349 Massachusetts communities and more than the next two North Shore communities combined. It also recorded 268 crashes involving a pedestrian, which is more than half of the entire region’s 520.

The number people expect to follow from that is a high fatal rate. It does not. Lynn recorded 9 fatal crashes over three years, a rate of 1.48 per 1,000, well under the statewide 2.68. Salem, with a quarter of Lynn’s crashes, recorded 6 fatal crashes and a rate of 3.58, and Lynnfield, with an eighth of them, recorded 3 and a rate of 3.75.

Both facts are consequences of the same thing. Lynn’s crash volume is concentrated on dense arterials through a built-up city, and the town’s own road list is led by Boston Street and Western Avenue at 40 crashes apiece in the latest year of the data, then Western Avenue southbound at 27 and Boston Street southbound at 20, with the Lynnway at 17. Those are city streets carrying heavy traffic at city speeds. They produce a very large number of collisions and a very high share involving people crossing on foot, and they do not usually produce the speeds that kill.

For the practice-area detail on a Lynn claim, the Lynn car accident page covers it, and the town’s full breakdown is at the Lynn crash report.

Salem Is the Highest Pedestrian Rate in the Region and in the State’s Gateway Cities

Salem recorded 86 pedestrian crashes out of 1,677 total, a rate of 51.28 per 1,000. That is three and a half times the statewide 14.76, and it is the highest figure among the 26 Gateway Cities as well, a point covered in the Gateway Cities crash data.

Salem also records the region’s highest bicycle rate at 26.24 per 1,000, on 44 bicycle crashes. Between them, people outside a vehicle are involved in 130 of Salem’s 1,677 crashes, about one in thirteen.

Salem’s crash volume is under a third of Lynn’s, so this is not a story about how busy the roads are. It is a story about what the roads are used for: a compact colonial street grid, a downtown with very heavy pedestrian traffic much of the year, and a road network where Highland Avenue and North Street carry through traffic across the middle of it.

The Quiet Towns, and Why Their Rates Should Be Read Carefully

Four communities, Topsfield, Hamilton, Wenham and Essex, recorded no crashes involving a pedestrian at all across the three years. That is a real figure and it is unsurprising: these are low-density towns where almost nobody walks along the road network.

The same low density makes their other rates unreliable, and this is worth stating plainly rather than burying.

Topsfield shows the region’s highest fatal rate at 13.61 per 1,000. That rate is 4 fatal crashes out of 294. Rockport shows 12.50 per 1,000, which is 2 out of 160. Manchester-by-the-Sea shows 7.30, which is 1 out of 137. One additional crash in any of these towns would move the number substantially, and one fewer would move it just as far. Nahant’s bicycle rate of 32.79 per 1,000, the region’s highest, is 2 bicycle crashes out of 61.

Rates built on counts that small are worth reporting, because leaving them out would flatter the region’s larger communities, but they are indicative rather than precise, and they should not be read as a ranking of how safe one small town is against another.

The Roads That Carry It

Eight of the 19 communities carry road-level entries in this dataset. The other eleven do not, so what follows describes those eight rather than the whole region, and the totals are what those eight towns’ own lists sum to for the latest year rather than a statewide ranking of road names.

On that basis the busiest names on the North Shore are Broadway at 180 crashes, Andover Street at 117, the Yankee Division Highway at 96, Washington Street at 86, Main Street at 84, Western Avenue at 80, Lowell Street at 76, Boston Street at 60, the Newburyport Turnpike at 52 and Cabot Street at 42.

Two of those are the same road under different names. The Yankee Division Highway is Route 128, which runs up the spine of the region from Peabody through Danvers and Beverly to Gloucester, and it appears in four of the eight towns’ lists. The statewide picture for that corridor is in the Route 128 crash data. The Newburyport Turnpike and the Blue Star Memorial Highway are both US Route 1, and Saugus’s Broadway entries are US 1 as well, which is why Broadway tops the list: Saugus contributes 152 of the 180 and Lynnfield the other 28. The Route 1 corridor is covered in the Route 1 crash data.

Andover Street is Route 114 through Peabody and Danvers, the retail corridor that connects them, and it carries 117 crashes across the two towns’ lists. Cabot Street and Rantoul Street in Beverly, Washington Street and Eastern Avenue in Gloucester, and Boston Street and Western Avenue in Lynn are the local arterials, and they are the ones where the pedestrian share concentrates.

What These Numbers Do and Do Not Measure

Every comparison in this article is crash to crash. A rate of 23.28 pedestrian crashes per 1,000 crashes says that when a crash happens on the North Shore, it is more likely to involve somebody on foot. It does not say a person on the North Shore is more likely to be hit, because that would require population or miles travelled in the denominator, and neither is in this dataset.

The counts are what was reported to MassDOT. Reporting practice differs between police departments, and a community with an unusually low count relative to its neighbours is more likely to be recording differently than to be dramatically safer.

And none of it is evidence in a case. A claim is decided on the specific collision: the road at that hour, the sight lines, the speeds, what the witnesses saw and what can still be documented. The figures here are context for where a crash happened, not proof of what happened in it. For crashes involving people on foot, pedestrian accident rights in Massachusetts sets out how those claims work, and the statewide picture is in the Massachusetts pedestrian crash data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which North Shore community has the most crashes?

A: Lynn, at 6,074 crashes from 2022 through 2024, which is tenth among all 349 Massachusetts communities. Peabody follows at 3,746, then Saugus at 2,063, Gloucester at 1,726, Salem at 1,677 and Beverly at 1,618. Seven North Shore communities sit inside the state’s top 100 by crash volume.

Q: Is the North Shore more dangerous than the rest of Massachusetts?

A: It depends entirely on which measure you mean, and the two main measures disagree. A North Shore crash is considerably more likely to involve a pedestrian, at 23.28 per 1,000 crashes against 14.26 in the rest of the state, and more likely to involve a bicycle, at 12.85 against 10.63. It is meaningfully less likely to be fatal, at 1.97 per 1,000 against 2.72. Injury crashes run slightly higher, at 244.31 per 1,000 against 228.00. Note also that all of these are crash to crash, so none of them measures an individual person’s risk.

Q: Which North Shore town has the highest pedestrian crash rate?

A: Salem, at 51.28 crashes involving a pedestrian per 1,000 crashes, on 86 out of 1,677. Lynn follows at 44.12, then Rockport at 37.50, Swampscott at 23.75 and Beverly at 16.69. The statewide figure is 14.76. Rockport’s rate rests on 6 pedestrian crashes out of 160, so it is far less stable than Salem’s or Lynn’s.

Q: Which North Shore town has the highest fatal crash rate?

A: On the arithmetic, Topsfield at 13.61 fatal crashes per 1,000, then Rockport at 12.50 and Manchester-by-the-Sea at 7.30. Those three rates are built on 4, 2 and 1 fatal crashes respectively, and a single additional crash would move any of them a long way, so they are indicative rather than precise. Among the region’s larger communities, where the counts can carry a rate, Lynnfield is highest at 3.75 on 3 fatal crashes and Salem next at 3.58 on 6, both above the statewide 2.68.

Q: Why does Lynn have so many crashes but so few deaths?

A: Its 9 fatal crashes over three years give it a rate of 1.48 per 1,000, well under the statewide 2.68, while its 6,074 crashes are the tenth highest count in Massachusetts. Both follow from the same road environment. Lynn’s volume sits on dense city arterials, led by Boston Street and Western Avenue in the town’s own road list, and streets like that generate a great many collisions at speeds that are much less likely to be fatal. The same conditions explain its 268 pedestrian crashes, more than half the region’s total.

Q: Are the North Shore towns without a crash report page missing from these numbers?

A: No. All 19 communities are counted in every regional figure on this page. Eleven of them are below the minimum crash count the crash report uses for a town page, so there is no separate page to link, and their figures appear in the table here instead.

Q: Does the North Shore include Newburyport and Haverhill?

A: Not in this article. Those communities sit in the Merrimack Valley grouping and are counted in the Merrimack Valley crash data along with Lawrence, Methuen, Andover, North Andover and their neighbours. No community is counted in both articles, so the two sets of regional totals can be added without double counting.

Q: Where do these numbers come from?

A: MassDOT crash records covering calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024, including the fatal counts, for all 349 Massachusetts communities in the dataset. The regional totals are the sum of the 19 communities named at the top of this article, and the rest-of-state figures are the statewide total minus that sum. The road figures are what the eight communities carrying road-level entries list for the latest year of the data, summed across those towns; they are not a statewide ranking of road names.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice?

A: No. This is general information about Massachusetts law and public crash data, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Whether any of it applies to your situation depends on facts that are not in this article. For advice about your own case, speak with a lawyer.

Talking to a Lawyer

If you were hurt in a crash in one of these 19 communities, the figures on this page are background rather than evidence. What decides a case is the specific collision, and the things that decide it are the ones that fade fastest: the road surface, the sight lines at that hour, the vehicle damage, and the people who saw it.

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.