Which Massachusetts Communities Have the Most Crashes on Route 28?

Barnstable, and it is not close. Across the eight Massachusetts communities whose 2024 road breakdowns name Route 28, MassDOT crash records carry 394 crashes on segments the source tags as Route 28 or SR 28. Barnstable accounts for 211 of them, which is 53.55 percent of the whole corridor, on two entries: Falmouth Road at 173 and Iyannough Road at 38. Yarmouth is second at 99, Dennis third at 26, and then the figure collapses. Randolph and Lawrence record 13 each, Bourne and Methuen 11 each, and Reading 10. The pattern underneath that is the real finding. Route 28 runs from the Lower Cape to the New Hampshire line, but 347 of the 394 crashes, 88.07 percent, are in the four Cape communities at its southern end. All figures come from MassDOT IMPACT Open Crash Data. 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 Road, and What the Data Calls It

Two things have to be said about the numbers before the table, because a corridor total is easy to get wrong.

MassDOT publishes each community’s highest-crash roads for a single year, so every road figure on this page is 2024, the most recent complete year in the file. The town-level totals for crashes, injuries, fatalities, bicycles and pedestrians are three-year figures covering 2022, 2023 and 2024. The two are not interchangeable and this article never mixes them in the same sentence.

The second point matters more. The source does not use one consistent name for a road. Officers write what they see, so the same highway appears as a route number in one town, as a street name with a route suffix in another, and as a bare street name in a third. This article counts only the entries the source itself tags with route 28 or SR 28. That decision costs it real crashes. Barnstable’s Iyannough Road appears twice, once as “IYANNOUGH RD RTE 28” at 38 crashes, which is counted, and once as “IYANNOUGH ROAD” at 102, which is not, because the source attaches no route number to it. Milton is a ninth community the route passes through, and its “Randolph Ave” at 16 and “Blue Hill Ave” at 38 carry no route tag either, so Milton does not appear in this article at all.

So 394 is a floor, not a ceiling, and the honest description of it is this: 394 is what these eight towns’ own 2024 road lists sum to for entries explicitly labelled Route 28. It is not a statewide road-name figure, and it should not be compared with one.

The Eight Towns Where Route 28 Ranks

Route 28 crashes recorded in 2024, with each town’s own three-year crash record beside it. The share column is the Route 28 entries as a percentage of all crashes on that town’s eight highest-crash roads, and the rank column is where the highest Route 28 entry sits in that town’s own list.

Community	Route 28 crashes, 2024	Share of town’s listed roads	Rank in town	All crashes, 2022 to 2024	Fatal
Barnstable	211	47.6%	1st	3,703	13
Yarmouth	99	55.6%	1st	1,744	4
Dennis	26	21.7%	3rd	1,047	0
Randolph	13	8.7%	8th	2,606	4
Lawrence	13	9.8%	8th	5,385	5
Bourne	11	8.1%	5th	2,172	1
Methuen	11	9.7%	7th	3,409	8
Reading	10	10.9%	5th	1,534	1

Read the rank column and the corridor splits in half in front of you. In Barnstable and Yarmouth, Route 28 is the single highest-crash road in the municipality. In Randolph and Lawrence it is eighth, which is to say last on a list that stops at eight, and it is only there at all because the list goes that deep.

Answer Capsule

Barnstable has the most Route 28 crashes of any Massachusetts community: 211 in 2024, across Falmouth Road at 173 and Iyannough Road at 38, out of 394 recorded on Route 28 segments across all eight communities whose road breakdowns name the route. Yarmouth follows at 99, Dennis at 26, Randolph and Lawrence at 13 each, Bourne and Methuen at 11 each and Reading at 10. The four Cape Cod communities hold 347 of the 394, or 88.07 percent. Route 28 is the highest-crash road in its own town in Barnstable and Yarmouth, and ranks eighth in Randolph and Lawrence. Across all eight towns the three-year record is 21,600 crashes, 36 fatal, 5,045 involving injury, 187 involving a bicycle and 314 involving a pedestrian, for a fatal rate of 1.67 per 1,000 crashes against a statewide 2.68.

Eighty-Eight Percent of the Corridor Is on the Cape

The four Cape communities, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis and Bourne, account for 347 of the 394. The four northern ones, Randolph, Lawrence, Methuen and Reading, account for 47 between them.

That is not because the northern towns are quiet. They are busier. Across three years the four northern communities recorded 12,934 crashes against the Cape four’s 8,666. There is roughly fifty percent more crash volume at the northern end of this corridor, and roughly one seventh as much of it lands on Route 28.

The explanation is what Route 28 is competing with in each place, and every town’s own road list shows it plainly. In Reading the two highest-crash roads are Interstate 95 southbound at 23 and Interstate 93 southbound at 14. In Methuen they are Interstate 93 northbound at 22 and Route 213 westbound at 18. In Randolph they are Route 24 northbound at 35 and southbound at 23, then Interstate 93 northbound at 20. In Lawrence, Interstate 495 northbound at 20. In all four, Route 28 is a local street in a town whose traffic is carried by limited access highway, and the crash volume follows the highway.

On the Cape the relationship inverts. The limited access road there is the Mid-Cape Highway, Route 6, and this site’s Route 6 analysis already records why its Cape figures look low: the through traffic is on the highway, and the crashes are on the surface roads it feeds. Route 28 is that surface road. In Barnstable it carries 47.6 percent of all the crashes on the town’s eight worst roads. In Yarmouth it carries 55.6 percent, which means one road accounts for more than half of the recorded crash burden across the whole of that town’s worst-road list.

The Two Halves Are Different Kinds of Road, and the Data Says So Twice

Split the eight communities and the three-year town-level figures separate cleanly.

	Crashes	Fatal per 1,000	Bicycle per 1,000	Pedestrian per 1,000
Cape four	8,666	2.08	14.19	10.50
Northern four	12,934	1.39	4.95	17.24
All eight	21,600	1.67	8.66	14.54
Massachusetts	405,239	2.68	10.75	14.76

Two contrasts are worth naming.

The bicycle and pedestrian rates run in opposite directions at the two ends. The Cape communities record 14.19 bicycle crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 10.75, and 10.50 pedestrian against 14.76. The northern communities do the reverse: 4.95 bicycle, well under half the state figure, and 17.24 pedestrian, above it. This is the same shape the Cape Cod crash data found across all fifteen Cape towns and the same one the bicycle crash analysis describes as the difference between seasonal recreational riding and dense walked streets. Lawrence alone recorded 145 pedestrian crashes over three years, which is 46 percent of the pedestrian total across all eight communities, and pedestrian claims in that setting are their own subject, covered in the pedestrian crash data.

The fatal rate is the second contrast and it runs against intuition. All eight communities together record 1.67 fatal crashes per 1,000, comfortably below the statewide 2.68, and the northern four are lower still at 1.39. Dennis recorded no fatal crash at all across 1,047 crashes in three years. That is consistent with what this site’s fatal crash analysis found statewide, which is that lethality concentrates on fast rural road rather than on busy town arterials, and busy town arterial is what most of Route 28 is.

Route 28 Is Missing From One Statewide List and Present on the Other

MassDOT publishes two statewide road lists for 2024, and Route 28 behaves differently on each.

It does not appear anywhere on the statewide list of highest-crash roads. That list is led by MAIN ST at 2,672, WASHINGTON ST at 1,118 and PLEASANT ST at 633, with Interstate 93 northbound the highest interstate entry at 444. Route 28 is absent, which follows from the naming problem above: its crashes are recorded under a dozen different street names in a dozen different towns and never aggregate into a single statewide row.

It does appear on the statewide list of roads with the most fatal crashes, once, as “RANDOLPH AVENUE Rte SR28 N” with 2 fatal crashes. The statewide fatal list attaches no community to its entries, so this article does not attach one either. That list is led by Interstate 495 northbound at 9, the only entry anywhere above 3.

Both facts are small, and the honest reading of them is that neither says much about risk. A road that is recorded under many names will be undercounted on any list built by name, and a 2024 fatal count of 2 on any single road is a number small enough that one year is not a pattern.

Four Counties, Six District Courts

A corridor case is not filed on the corridor. It is filed where the crash happened, and these eight communities are spread across four counties and six District Court divisions. The territories below were read this run in M.G.L. c. 218, sec. 1, which enumerates every division town by town.

Community	County	District Court division
Barnstable, Yarmouth	Barnstable	First district court of Barnstable, held at Barnstable
Dennis	Barnstable	Second district court of Barnstable, held at Orleans
Bourne	Barnstable	Third district court of Barnstable, held at Falmouth
Randolph	Norfolk	District court of East Norfolk, held at Quincy
Lawrence, Methuen	Essex	District court of Lawrence, held at Lawrence and Methuen
Reading	Middlesex	Fourth district court of eastern Middlesex, held at Woburn

Above the amount in controversy set under M.G.L. c. 212, sec. 3, the case goes to the Superior Court for the county instead, which means Barnstable, Norfolk, Essex or Middlesex depending on where the crash happened. The county-level picture for three of the four is set out in this site’s Essex County and Norfolk County crash data, and the Middlesex divisions are listed in full in the Middlesex County venue article.

Two towns on this corridor are worth a note for anyone who assumes the courthouse is the nearest one. Reading is a Middlesex town whose District Court sits at Woburn, not at Reading. Randolph is a Norfolk town whose District Court sits at Quincy. Neither is obvious from a map.

What the Numbers Do and Do Not Tell You About Your Own Crash

A road total describes a pattern across a year of collisions. It decides nothing about any one of them, and it is worth being direct about that because the temptation runs the other way.

Fault in a Massachusetts crash is decided on the evidence of that collision: the positions of the vehicles, the signals and markings, sight lines, speed, weather and the accounts of the people who were there. Massachusetts apportions fault between the parties under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, under which a plaintiff’s own negligence does not bar recovery so long as it was not greater than the negligence of the parties they are recovering from, with damages reduced in proportion to the plaintiff’s share. How that arithmetic works in practice is set out in comparative negligence in Massachusetts.

What a corridor figure is genuinely useful for is knowing what to ask for early. On a road like Falmouth Road in Barnstable, where one arterial carries nearly half of a town’s recorded crash burden, signal timing records, sight line obstructions, prior complaints and any recent change to the layout are documents that exist now and may not exist in two years. They are worth requesting before they age out, and that is a decision made in the first weeks rather than the last.

The immediate steps after a crash on any of these roads are the same ones that apply anywhere in the Commonwealth, and this site sets them out in reporting a car accident in Massachusetts. Town-level crash figures for every qualifying community are published in the Massachusetts crash report, and the practice-area page for the only one of these eight communities with its own city page is auto accidents in Lawrence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Massachusetts community has the most Route 28 crashes?

A: Barnstable, with 211 recorded in 2024 across two entries, Falmouth Road at 173 and Iyannough Road at 38. That is 53.55 percent of the 394 crashes recorded on Route 28 segments across all eight communities whose road breakdowns name the route. Yarmouth is second at 99 and Dennis third at 26.

Q: How many crashes happen on Route 28 in Massachusetts?

A: The eight communities whose 2024 road lists name it sum to 394 crashes on segments the source tags as Route 28 or SR 28. That figure is a floor rather than a total. The source records many stretches of the route under a bare street name with no route number, including Barnstable’s Iyannough Road at 102 crashes and both of Milton’s Route 28 streets, and this article counts none of those.

Q: Why are the Cape figures so much higher than the ones up north?

A: Because of what Route 28 competes with in each place. In Reading, Methuen, Randolph and Lawrence the town’s traffic is carried by Interstate 93, Interstate 95, Interstate 495 and Route 24, all of which outrank Route 28 on their own towns’ lists, and Route 28 is a local street. On the Cape the limited access road is Route 6, and Route 28 is the surface arterial the highway feeds. In Barnstable it carries 47.6 percent of the crashes on the town’s eight worst roads, and in Yarmouth 55.6 percent.

Q: Is Route 28 one of the most dangerous roads in Massachusetts?

A: The data does not support saying so, and it does not support the opposite either. Route 28 appears nowhere on the 2024 statewide list of highest-crash roads, which is led by MAIN ST at 2,672, because its crashes are recorded under many different street names and never aggregate into one row. It appears once on the statewide list of roads with the most fatal crashes, as Randolph Avenue northbound with 2, against a list led by Interstate 495 northbound at 9. A count of 2 in a single year is not a pattern.

Q: Which court would hear a Route 28 crash case?

A: It depends on the town, because the eight communities sit in four counties. Under M.G.L. c. 218, sec. 1, Barnstable and Yarmouth go to the first district court of Barnstable held at Barnstable, Dennis to the second held at Orleans, and Bourne to the third held at Falmouth. Randolph goes to the district court of East Norfolk held at Quincy, Lawrence and Methuen to the district court of Lawrence held at Lawrence and Methuen, and Reading to the fourth district court of eastern Middlesex held at Woburn. Above the amount in controversy set under M.G.L. c. 212, sec. 3, the case goes instead to the Superior Court for Barnstable, Norfolk, Essex or Middlesex County.

Q: Are the Route 28 communities more dangerous than the Massachusetts average?

A: Not on the measure that matters most. Across the eight communities the three-year record is 21,600 crashes and 36 fatal, a rate of 1.67 fatal crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 2.68, and the four northern communities are lower still at 1.39. Dennis recorded no fatal crash at all across 1,047 crashes in three years. The injury rate, 233.56 per 1,000, is marginally above the statewide 228.90.

Q: What does the bicycle and pedestrian split show along this corridor?

A: The two halves run in opposite directions. The four Cape communities record 14.19 bicycle crashes per 1,000 against a statewide 10.75, and 10.50 pedestrian against 14.76. The four northern communities record 4.95 bicycle and 17.24 pedestrian. Lawrence alone accounts for 145 of the 314 pedestrian crashes across all eight communities. One limit belongs with those figures: crash records count collisions and carry no measure of how many people were riding or walking, so they cannot separate exposure from risk.

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. Crash statistics describe patterns across many collisions and say nothing about who was at fault in any particular one. 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.

Talking to a Lawyer

The useful thing about a corridor like this one is that it tells you which questions are worth asking early, and the answer is different at the two ends of the same road.

On the Cape stretch, where one arterial carries close to half of a town’s recorded crash burden, the documents that matter tend to be about the road itself: signal timing, lane configuration, sight line obstructions, any recent layout change, and whether the same intersection has generated complaints before. Those records exist now and they do not exist forever.

At the northern end, where Route 28 is an ordinary street in a town whose volume is on the interstate, the questions are the ordinary ones: what the other driver’s insurer was told first, whether a recorded statement was requested, and what the police report actually says as against what the people involved remember.

Fee arrangements in injury work are usually contingent, meaning no fee unless there is a recovery, and the client may be responsible for costs and expenses.

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.