Deadliest Highways and Corridors: Boston to Manchester

If you drive in eastern Massachusetts or southern New Hampshire, you already know which roads make your shoulders tense up before you even reach them. The Boston-Manchester media market stretches from the Southeast Expressway's stop-and-go merges to the F.E. Everett Turnpike's toll plaza, and the crash data from both states keeps flagging the same handful of trouble spots year after year.

Massachusetts recorded 343 traffic deaths in 2023, the most recent year with finalized federal figures, down from a pandemic-era peak of 435 in 2022 and 413 in 2021¹. New Hampshire's fatality count moves on a similar cycle: 130 deaths in 2023, after a jump to 146 the year before and 118 in 2021². Neither state is trending safer in a straight line, and both keep circling back to the same interchange designs, the same rotaries, and one aging two-lane stretch of interstate that connects them.

Statewide, Massachusetts logged 128,769 crashes in 2025, and Boston alone saw 451 crashes in April 2026 and 462 in March³. That volume concentrates on a short list of roads.

The Braintree split, the Southeast Expressway, and Storrow Drive

Merge onto I-93 south of Boston and you'll eventually hit the Braintree split, where I-93, the Southeast Expressway, and Route 3 come apart all at once. The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization studied the interchange specifically because of its safety and operations problems, working with Braintree, Quincy, Milton, and the state highway department to find ways to lengthen the merge and exit lanes and cut down on rear-end crashes⁴. A related bridge project just south of the split replaced two structures carrying Route 3 over an I-93 ramp, one more sign of how much attention this single interchange demands⁴.

The region's Vision Zero Action Plan, produced by the same MPO, found that intersection-related crashes were the most common type of fatal and serious-injury crash across the Boston region from 2018 through 2022, accounting for 44 percent of the total. Four-way intersections and T-intersections made up 94 percent of those⁵.

Then there's Storrow Drive and its parkway cousins, Soldiers Field Road in Boston and Memorial Drive in Cambridge, all restricted to passenger cars because of low bridge clearances. The state's Department of Conservation and Recreation runs an annual public-awareness campaign ahead of college move-in day specifically because trucks and rental vans keep striking the underpasses, and the agency has added high-visibility "cars only" signage at the entrances to try to stop it before it happens⁶.

Route 9 in Framingham and the Bell Circle rotary

West of the city, Route 9 through Framingham and Natick has drawn its own dedicated safety study from the Boston Region MPO, which flagged the corridor for crossing hazards, poor sidewalk conditions, and a lack of pedestrian signals at side streets, on top of a crash rate planners say runs higher than comparable arterials⁷. MassDOT's own crash-cluster mapping, which ranks the state's top 200 intersection clusters by count and severity, has repeatedly picked up clusters along this corridor⁸.

On the North Shore, the Bell Circle rotary in Revere, where Route 1A meets Route 60, shows up in that same crash-cluster analysis. Rotaries force merging drivers to judge speed and yield timing at once, which is exactly the kind of geometry the state's cluster methodology is built to catch⁸.

I-93 from the Massachusetts line to Manchester

Cross into New Hampshire on I-93 and the road narrows to two lanes each way for a stretch that's carried Boston-bound commuter traffic for decades. NHDOT is now widening roughly 20 miles of I-93 between the Massachusetts state line and Manchester, from Exit 1 through Exit 5, with safety and mobility named as the project's goals⁹.

Farther north, the same interstate has drawn direct enforcement attention. New Hampshire State Police ran an Office of Highway Safety initiative in February 2024 on I-93 between Boscawen and Plymouth, roughly Exit 17 to Exit 24, after the corridor logged 9 fatal crashes and more than 1,000 total crashes since 2019¹⁰. Troopers stopped 144 vehicles for various violations and issued 105 citations during that single week¹⁰.

The Everett Turnpike's toll plaza and Manchester's own dangerous corners

South of Manchester, the F.E. Everett Turnpike is in the middle of a multi-year overhaul. NHDOT began converting the Bedford toll plaza to all-electronic tolling in January 2026, tearing out the old 13-lane concrete plaza as part of a $16 million project set to finish by September 2027. That work is one piece of a wider effort, underway since 2024, to widen the turnpike to three lanes each direction between Nashua and Manchester¹¹.

Inside the city, the intersection of Sheffield Road and South Willow Street has been one of Manchester's most persistent trouble spots. City and state records count 56 crashes there between 2014 and 2024, 49 involving more than one vehicle, with 2017 alone producing 12 crashes. NHDOT told the city's Board of Mayor and Aldermen in July 2026 that installing all-way stop signs, which cost a few thousand dollars, made more sense than waiting until 2028 for a full traffic signal that would run roughly $500,000¹². A separate NHDOT road safety audit of the Hanover Street and Beech Street area found 36 crashes over the ten years from 2005 through 2015, including one pedestrian death, with improper driving and disregard of traffic control devices as the leading causes¹³. The state's long-running Driving Toward Zero program, which aims to cut traffic deaths and serious injuries in half and reach zero by 2050, keeps intersections like these at the center of its planning¹⁴.

After a crash on one of these roads

None of this means every drive on these roads ends badly. But if you're hurt in a crash on the Braintree split, Route 9, I-93 near the state line, or South Willow Street, you're dealing with a location that state and regional traffic engineers have already flagged, studied, and in several cases funded a fix for. That history can matter for a claim, especially where a known design problem, a rotary with no yield control, an intersection that's waited years for a signal, contributed to what happened. An attorney familiar with these corridors can help you sort out whether the road itself played a role. You can find one through the legal directory.

This article provides general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. FHWA, State Highway Safety Report: Massachusetts

2. FHWA, State Highway Safety Report: New Hampshire

3. ThatCarHitMe.com, Massachusetts 2025 Annual Crash Report and Boston, MA Crash Report, April 2026

4. Boston Region MPO/CTPS, I-93/Southeast Expressway/Route 3 (Braintree Split) Operational Assessment

5. Boston Region MPO, Vision Zero Action Plan

6. Mass.gov, DCR Launches Annual Storrowing Public Awareness Campaign

7. Boston Region MPO/CTPS, Route 9 Priority Corridor Study, Framingham and Natick

8. Mass.gov, Top Crash Locations and Maps and MassDOT Top 200 Crash Clusters, MassGIS Open Data

9. NHDOT, Salem-Manchester I-93 Widening

10. NH State Police, Interstate 93 Highway Safety Initiative

11. NHDOT, All Electronic Tolling Set to Begin on the F.E. Everett Turnpike

12. Manchester Ink Link, NHDOT Recommends All-Way Stop at Sheffield Road and South Willow Street

13. NHDOT, Road Safety Audit: Manchester (Hanover and Beech Street)

14. NHDOT, NH Driving Toward Zero