Where Do Tractor-Trailer Crashes Happen in Massachusetts?

Most Massachusetts tractor-trailer crashes happen in daylight on ordinary town and city roads, but the deadly ones concentrate on the interstates, and above all on the Massachusetts Turnpike. MassDOT crash records for 2022 through 2024 carry 6,552 crashes involving a tractor-trailer or truck tractor (2,237, 2,190 and 2,125 by year), which is 1.62 percent of the state’s 405,243 crashes. Those crashes include 28 fatal ones, 2.58 percent of the state’s 1,087, a rate of 4.27 fatal crashes per 1,000 against 2.68 for crashes of every kind. The Turnpike alone carries 499 of them and 6 of the 28 deaths. Boston records the most at 215, followed by Worcester at 202 and Springfield at 148, but the towns where trucks make up the largest share of all crashes are on the Turnpike and Interstate 84 corridor west of Worcester: Sturbridge at 6.00 percent, Palmer at 5.60 and Auburn at 5.07, against 1.62 percent statewide. The surprise in the data is the injury rate. Only 13.13 percent of these crashes involved an injury, against 22.89 percent of all crashes, because most of them are sideswipes, scrapes with parked cars and strikes on poles and bridges at low speed. Every figure here comes from a MassDOT query run on 2026-10-20 and can be checked against the town pages in the Massachusetts crash report. To talk through a specific crash, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the line is answered 24 hours a day, and the first telephone consultation is free.

Where the Numbers Come From

The source is MassDOT’s open crash data for 2022 through 2024, the same records behind every town page in the crash report. Each crash record lists the configuration of every vehicle involved. This page counts a crash as a tractor-trailer crash when any vehicle in it is listed as a tractor pulling a semi-trailer, a tractor pulling doubles or triples, or a truck tractor running without a trailer (a bobtail). Tractors pulling a single semi-trailer account for 5,899 of the 6,552, about nine in ten, and where that narrower count tells a different story the page says so.

Three limits apply to everything below:

• There is no traffic volume in the data. A road or town with more trucks on it will have more truck crashes for that reason alone. These are counts and shares of crashes, not rates per mile driven, and none of them says one road is more dangerous per truck than another.
• Roads are counted by their road-inventory name. Since 2023 many State Police reports leave the typed road name blank, so this page uses the name the state’s road inventory attaches to the crash location. On that basis, 223 truck crashes carry no road name at all.
• A crash record does not assign fault. “Involving a tractor-trailer” means one was in the crash, not that its driver caused it.

The Shape in One Table

Measure (2022 to 2024)	Crashes involving a tractor-trailer	All Massachusetts crashes
Crashes	6,552	405,243
Fatal crashes	28	1,087
Fatal crashes per 1,000	4.27	2.68
Share involving an injury	13.13%	22.89%
On an Interstate	20.47%	10.18%
Sideswipe, same direction	31.20%	13.75%
Rear-end	14.09%	24.53%
In daylight	77.14%	67.03%

Two things stand out. Truck crashes are twice as likely as crashes generally to be on an Interstate, and they are more than twice as likely to be same-direction sideswipes, the crash that happens when a long vehicle changes lanes or swings wide on a turn. And the share that kill someone is higher than average while the share that injure anyone is far lower.

The Busiest Municipalities

By raw count the list follows the big cities, where most traffic of any kind is.

Municipality	Tractor-trailer crashes	Fatal	All crashes in town	Truck share
Boston	215	0	17,408	1.24%
Worcester	202	0	15,598	1.30%
Springfield	148	0	11,109	1.33%
Chicopee	128	2	5,238	2.44%
Auburn	114	0	2,247	5.07%
New Bedford	106	1	11,070	0.96%
Chelsea	104	0	2,920	3.56%
Westborough	104	0	2,182	4.77%

Truck crashes were recorded in 300 municipalities over the three years. None of the eight busiest recorded more than two deaths in them.

Where Trucks Are the Biggest Share of Crashes

Share tells a different story from count. Among the 116 Massachusetts municipalities with at least 1,000 crashes over the three years, the six where tractor-trailers make up the largest share of all crashes are:

1. Sturbridge: 84 of 1,400 crashes, 6.00 percent.
2. Palmer: 61 of 1,090, 5.60 percent.
3. Auburn: 114 of 2,247, 5.07 percent.
4. Westfield: 92 of 1,864, 4.94 percent.
5. Charlton: 85 of 1,751, 4.85 percent.
6. Westborough: 104 of 2,182, 4.77 percent.

Every one of the six records tractor-trailer crashes on the Turnpike, and Sturbridge and Auburn are where Interstate 84 and Interstate 290 meet it. The Turnpike truck crashes alone put Charlton at 52 and Auburn at 50, the two highest Turnpike counts of any town. At the other end of the list, Hanover recorded 5 truck crashes in 1,198 (0.42 percent) and Lowell 48 in 7,781 (0.62 percent).

Charlton stands out on severity as well as share. It recorded 3 fatal tractor-trailer crashes, the most of any municipality, and they are 3 of the 11 fatal crashes of any kind recorded in the town over the three years. The Interstate 84 article found the same corridor pattern from the other direction: the truck share on I-84 at Sturbridge is matched by the Turnpike in the same towns, so the pattern belongs to the corridor rather than to one road.

The Roads

Road (inventory name)	Tractor-trailer crashes	Fatal
Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90)	499	6
Interstate 495	250	2
Interstate 91	107	0
Interstate 290	103	0
Yankee Division Highway (Route 128)	85	0
Interstate 93	75	0
Interstate 95	52	0
AMVETS Memorial Highway (Route 24)	47	2

Main Street appears 274 times, but that is dozens of different Main Streets in dozens of towns added together, so it is not one road.

The Turnpike is where the deaths are. Its 499 truck crashes are 6.22 percent of the 8,020 crashes recorded on it, almost four times the statewide truck share, and the 6 fatal ones are 6 of the 21 fatal crashes on the whole Turnpike over the three years, 28.6 percent. The injury share of Turnpike truck crashes, 19.64 percent (98 of 499), is close to the 19.01 percent for all Turnpike crashes, so on the highway a truck crash is not milder than any other. The Interstate 90 article and the Interstate 495 article cover those roads in full.

Why the Injury Share Is Low

The low injury share is not an accident of which kinds of crash trucks have. Applying the statewide injury rate for each crash type to the truck crashes’ own mix of types predicts about 1,309 injury crashes. The records show 860. The gap is inside the crash types:

• Single-vehicle crashes: 6.22 percent involved an injury (104 of 1,671), against 26.48 percent statewide. A car leaving the road usually hits something with its occupants inside; a tractor-trailer striking a pole, a parked car or a bridge often leaves no one hurt.
• Angle crashes: 17.62 percent against 26.62 percent.
• Rear-end crashes: 25.03 percent, slightly above the 23.32 percent statewide.

The road class shows where the mild crashes are. On local roads only 4.93 percent of truck crashes involved an injury, against 18.36 percent for all local-road crashes. On Interstates the figure is 21.48 percent, close to the 23.09 percent for all Interstate crashes. The first thing struck tells the same story: 698 truck crashes (10.65 percent) began with a collision with a parked vehicle, 532 with a utility pole or other pole or post, and 110 with a bridge or overpass overhead. INFERRED, not shown by the data: these are the low-speed contacts of a long, high vehicle working through streets built for smaller ones.

The bridge strikes are local. Of the 110, Worcester recorded 19 and Westborough 12. Section 19 of M.G.L. chapter 90 caps vehicle width at 102 inches and a semi-trailer’s length at 53 feet without a special permit, but a truck’s height and a bridge’s clearance meet on the street, not in the statute book.

Where the Deaths Are

The 28 fatal crashes look nothing like the 6,552 as a whole.

• 11 were on Interstates, against 20.47 percent of all truck crashes.
• 12 were in the dark on an unlit road, 42.9 percent, against 5.59 percent of all truck crashes.
• 13 were rear-end crashes and 8 were head-on or front-to-front. The records do not say which vehicle struck which.
• 2 involved a pedestrian.
• By year: 13 in 2022, 7 in 2023, 8 in 2024.

Read together, the numbers say a tractor-trailer crash on a lit city street in daylight is common and usually ends with damage and a report, while one at highway speed in the dark is uncommon and far more often deadly. With 28 deaths over three years, the sub-counts are small and should not be pushed further than that.

Answer Capsule

From 2022 through 2024, MassDOT recorded 6,552 Massachusetts crashes involving a tractor-trailer or truck tractor, 1.62 percent of all crashes but 2.58 percent of fatal ones (28 of 1,087), a fatal rate of 4.27 per 1,000 against 2.68. Boston (215), Worcester (202) and Springfield (148) record the most; Sturbridge (6.00 percent), Palmer (5.60) and Auburn (5.07) have the highest truck share of crashes, all on the Turnpike and I-84 corridor. The Turnpike carries 499 truck crashes and 6 of the 28 deaths. Only 13.13 percent of truck crashes involved an injury, against 22.89 percent overall, because most are low-speed sideswipes and strikes on parked cars, poles and bridges.

Hours, Months and Weather

Truck crashes follow the working day. The five hours from 8 a.m. to 12:59 p.m. hold 2,600 of them, 39.7 percent, and the single busiest hour is 11 a.m. at 534. Months barely matter: the lowest is February at 473 over the three years and the highest October at 599. Dry pavement accounted for 80.80 percent and wet pavement for 14.55 percent; snow, slush and ice together for 3.66 percent.

What the Location Facts Change About a Claim

A crash with a tractor-trailer is usually a claim against a commercial carrier, not just a driver, and the location facts in the record matter early:

1. Get the crash report. It records the vehicle configuration, the road, the light and the surface, and whether the officer marked the crash federally reportable to the motor carrier safety agency (24.04 percent of these crashes were marked yes).
2. Note the lane and the turn. Same-direction sideswipes are almost a third of truck crashes, and which vehicle left its lane is usually the whole question.
3. Photograph the scene and the trailer. Clearance, trailer length and where the truck was parked or turning can fade from the scene within days.
4. Keep the medical record continuous. A low-speed truck crash can still injure, and a gap in treatment is the first thing an insurer points to.
5. Count the deadline. Most Massachusetts injury claims must be started within three years under M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A.

Fault is shared under Massachusetts law rather than all or nothing. Under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, an injured person can recover if their own negligence was not greater than that of the people they are claiming against, and the damages are reduced by their share. The truck accident claims article covers the carrier, insurance and federal rules side of these cases, and the truck accident pages for Boston, Worcester, Springfield and Chicopee cover the local courts and hospitals.

Key terms

• Tractor-trailer is a truck tractor pulling one or more trailers; on this page it includes a single semi-trailer, doubles, triples and a bobtail tractor with no trailer.
• Bobtail is a truck tractor driven without a trailer attached.
• Sideswipe, same direction is a crash between two vehicles traveling the same way whose sides make contact, typically during a lane change or a wide turn.
• Truck share is the number of crashes involving a tractor-trailer divided by all crashes recorded in the same town or on the same road.
• Federally reportable is the crash report’s mark for a commercial vehicle crash that meets the federal motor carrier reporting definition.
• Fatal crashes per 1,000 is the number of crashes in which someone died for every 1,000 crashes of the same kind.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many tractor-trailer crashes happen in Massachusetts each year?

A: About 2,100 to 2,200. MassDOT records 2,237 crashes involving a tractor-trailer or truck tractor in 2022, 2,190 in 2023 and 2,125 in 2024, a three-year total of 6,552, with 13, 7 and 8 fatal crashes. The count fell by about 5 percent over the three years while total crashes in the state held flat; the data does not say why.

Q: What Massachusetts town has the most truck accidents?

A: Boston, with 215 tractor-trailer crashes from 2022 through 2024, followed by Worcester at 202 and Springfield at 148. As a share of all crashes, though, Sturbridge leads among municipalities with at least 1,000 crashes, at 84 of 1,400 or 6.00 percent, followed by Palmer and Auburn. Charlton recorded the most fatal tractor-trailer crashes, 3.

Q: Which Massachusetts highway has the most tractor-trailer crashes?

A: The Massachusetts Turnpike, with 499 crashes involving a tractor-trailer over the three years and 6 of the 28 fatal ones. Interstate 495 is second at 250 with 2 fatal. Trucks are in 6.22 percent of all Turnpike crashes, almost four times their 1.62 percent share statewide.

Q: Are truck accidents more deadly than other crashes in Massachusetts?

A: Yes, on these records. There were 4.27 fatal crashes per 1,000 crashes involving a tractor-trailer, against 2.68 per 1,000 for all crashes. But truck crashes were less likely to injure anyone (13.13 percent against 22.89 percent), because so many are low-speed scrapes on local streets. The deadly ones cluster on Interstates and in the dark on unlit roads.

Q: What kind of crash do tractor-trailers have most often?

A: The same-direction sideswipe, at 31.20 percent of truck crashes against 13.75 percent of all crashes, followed by single-vehicle crashes at 25.50 percent. Rear-end crashes, the most common type statewide, are only 14.09 percent of truck crashes, though 13 of the 28 fatal truck crashes were rear-end.

Q: How often do trucks hit bridges in Massachusetts?

A: The records show 110 crashes from 2022 through 2024 in which a tractor-trailer’s first harmful event was a collision with a bridge or overpass overhead. Worcester recorded 19 and Westborough 12. Counting every kind of vehicle, Boston recorded the most bridge-overhead strikes, 65.

Q: Does it matter who was at fault in a truck crash in Massachusetts?

A: Yes, but it is not all or nothing. Under M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 85, an injured person can still recover if their own negligence was not greater than the negligence of the people they claim against, with the damages reduced by their own share. A crash report records the vehicles and conditions, not fault.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice?

A: No. This is general information about Massachusetts law and public Massachusetts 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. To have someone look at the actual facts, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the line is answered 24 hours a day, and the first telephone consultation is free.