Rollover, T-bone, and head-on hotspots in the Boston and Manchester area

Most crashes are minor. The ones that put people in the hospital are usually a particular few. A T-bone lands square on a door, with little more than sheet metal between the other car and the people inside. A head-on combines the speed of both vehicles into a single impact. A rollover puts the roof where the road should be. Across the Boston and Manchester market, which runs from MetroWest and the North Shore up through Manchester and the New Hampshire seacoast, the roads where these happen are named and tracked in public records. Massachusetts alone logged 128,769 crashes in 2025.¹

How the region tracks its worst crashes

Two state transportation departments cover this market. MassDOT builds its crash data from Registry of Motor Vehicles records, which come from State Police and local police reports, and publishes a Top Crash Locations map that ranks the 200 worst intersection clusters in the state.² In New Hampshire, NHDOT runs the Driving Toward Zero program and keeps a crash-location analysis that feeds its Highway Safety Improvement Program.³ The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, the area's federally designated planning body, layers its own crash analysis on top for regional planning.⁴

The pattern the data shows is consistent. A small share of roads carries most of the severe crashes. The region's high-injury network is about 7 percent of street mileage but accounted for roughly 65 percent of the fatal and serious-injury crashes between 2018 and 2022.⁵ Boston alone reports on the order of 450 crashes in a single month.⁶

T-bone crashes come from the intersections

An angle crash, the kind people call a T-bone or broadside, happens where two paths cross. That means intersections, and intersections do outsized harm here. In the Boston region, crashes at intersections accounted for 32 percent of traffic fatalities and 40 percent of serious injuries.⁴ The region also holds 66 of the 200 worst intersection crash clusters in Massachusetts.⁴

Several show up as whole corridors rather than single corners. Route 9 in Framingham, Route 16 through Chelsea, Everett, and Medford, and Route 107 in Lynn and Salem each carry multiple ranked clusters.⁴ Regional Vision Zero work adds Route 1A and Route 129 in Lynn, Route 4 in Lexington and Bedford, and Route 2 in Concord to the high-injury list.⁵

The clearest New Hampshire example is in Manchester. NHDOT studied the intersection of Sheffield Road and South Willow Street, which is New Hampshire Route 28, and counted 56 crashes from 2014 through 2024. Forty-nine of them involved more than one vehicle, the signature of an angle collision, and 2017 alone saw 12.⁷ In July 2026, NHDOT recommended converting the intersection to an all-way stop.⁷ That fix turns crossing traffic into stopping traffic, which is the point when cars keep hitting each other's sides.

Head-on and wrong-way crashes

Head-on crashes are rarer than angle crashes and far deadlier, because the two vehicles' speeds add together. Federal researchers group head-on collisions with rollovers and hitting trees as the three outcomes that make up more than 70 percent of roadway-departure deaths.⁸ Roadway departures are the leading fatal crash type in this market, at about 56 percent of traffic deaths statewide in Massachusetts and 50 percent in the Boston region.⁴

On the New Hampshire side, one stretch drew a specific fix. Interstate 95 between North Hampton and Portsmouth has seen roughly 1,700 crashes since 2018, and five people died there in 2024, most after a vehicle crossed the median into oncoming traffic.⁹ In August 2025 the state approved a $4.6 million contract for a five-mile median barrier, running from mile marker 8 in North Hampton through Greenland to mile marker 13.3 in Portsmouth, with completion required by September 2026.⁹ A median barrier does one job: it keeps a car that has drifted out of its lane from becoming a head-on.

Massachusetts has a related problem that has grown fast. Using AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and MassDOT data, AAA found the average number of wrong-way deaths in the state rose from 19 a year in 2010 through 2014 to 27 a year in 2015 through 2018, a 77.6 percent jump that was more than double the national increase.¹⁰ Since 2010 the state has recorded more than 8,200 wrong-way crashes, 150 deaths, and over 4,500 injuries.¹⁰ MassDOT has since made wrong-way driving a named priority in its Strategic Highway Safety Plan and has been adding wrong-way detection systems at high-risk ramps.¹¹

Rollovers and run-off-road crashes

Rollovers are the most dangerous outcome per crash for the people inside the vehicle. In 2023 they accounted for 28 percent of all passenger-vehicle occupant deaths nationwide, and the risk climbs with the vehicle. Rollover was the most harmful event in 38 percent of pickup occupant deaths and 33 percent for SUVs, against 20 percent for cars.¹² With SUVs and pickups now most of what is on the road here, that mix matters.

Rollovers are mostly a roadway-departure story. They happen on curves, on highway ramps, and where a vehicle runs off the road and digs in or clips a barrier. That points at the interchange geometry this market is full of, from the ramp curves where Interstate 93, Interstate 293, and Route 101 knot together around Manchester to the older cloverleafs on Route 128. New Hampshire treats lane departure as the single largest source of its road deaths, and it is the top emphasis area in the Driving Toward Zero plan.³ The trend there is not improving: New Hampshire traffic deaths rose 42 percent over the decade ending in 2024, and the death rate per mile driven climbed 36 percent.¹³

Massachusetts still posts one of the lowest crash death rates in the country, at 0.56 deaths per 100 million miles driven in 2023.¹² The rate is low but the volume is not: with nearly 129,000 crashes a year, even the rarer crash types add up.¹

After a T-bone, head-on, or rollover

These are the crashes most likely to leave someone hurt, so a few steps matter more than usual. Get a copy of the police crash report, which flows through the RMV in Massachusetts and through the state crash records system in New Hampshire. Photograph the vehicles, the lane or intersection markings, and any skid marks or debris, because in an angle or head-on crash the physical evidence often settles who had the right of way. See a doctor even if you feel fine, since rollover and side-impact injuries can be internal and slow to show. Keep the paperwork together, because these cases often involve serious-injury claims and disputed fault.

If the crash was serious and you are weighing a claim, you can compare local personal-injury attorneys through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. thatcarhitme.com, Massachusetts Year-over-Year Crash Report, 2025. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/massachusetts/statewide/2025-annual-report

2. MassDOT, Top crash locations and maps. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/top-crash-locations-and-maps

3. New Hampshire Department of Transportation, NH Driving Toward Zero: Crash Locations. https://www.dot.nh.gov/projects-plans-and-programs/programs/nh-driving-toward-zero/critical-emphasis-areas/crash-locations

4. Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, Destination 2040 Needs Assessment, Chapter 4 (Safety). https://www.bostonmpo.org/data/html/plans/LRTP/destination/Destination_2040_Needs_Assessment_CH4.html

5. Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, Vision Zero Action Plan (Updated). https://www.bostonmpo.org/data/html/plans/Vision-Zero/Vision%20Zero%20Action%20Plan%20Updated.html

6. thatcarhitme.com, Boston, MA Crash Report, April 2026. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/massachusetts/boston/april-2026-report

7. Manchester Ink Link, NHDOT recommends all-way stop at Sheffield Road and South Willow Street, July 2026. https://manchester.inklink.news/nhdot-recommends-all-way-stop-at-sheffield-road-and-south-willow-street/

8. Federal Highway Administration, Roadway Departure Safety. https://highways.dot.gov/safety/RwD

9. New Hampshire Business Review, I-95 median barrier: $4.6M project approved after NH highway deaths, 2025. https://www.nhbr.com/i-95-median-barrier-4-6m-project-approved-after-nh-highway-deaths/

10. AAA Northeast, Massachusetts is Heading the Wrong Way with Wrong-Way Driving, March 2021. http://press.northeast.aaa.com/2021/03/23/aaa-massachusetts-is-heading-the-wrong-way-with-wrong-way-driving/

11. MassDOT, Strategic Highway Safety Plan. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/strategic-highway-safety-plan

12. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts, 2023 Data: Passenger Vehicles (DOT HS 813 723). https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813723.pdf

13. TRIP, Addressing America's Traffic Safety Crisis: New Hampshire, July 2025. https://tripnet.org/reports/addressing-americas-traffic-safety-crisis-new-hampshire-news-release-07-23-2025/