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Car crashes are on the rise in New Bedford. Certain spots on Coggeshall Street and Route 6 have been the site of dozens of collisions in recent years, a New Bedford Light analysis found.
The Light analyzed crash trends over the past three years, since June 2023, using data from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Read on to find out where crashes happened the most and which crashes are on the rise.
A cluster of crashes on Coggeshall Street
One part of the Near North End is home to a cluster of crashes.
In the last three years, dozens of collisions have happened at the two intersections where Coggeshall Street meets Route 18. Other nearby intersections are also crash hotspots, the data shows.
Jackie Jones has studied crash data as the assistant director of transportation planning for the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District, or SRPEDD — the government agency that oversees transportation planning across the South Coast.
Jones cautioned that it’s hard to say why some areas have more crashes without going deeper in the data, looking at individual crash reports, and studying the roadway itself, which is how transit planners usually investigate hotspots. But she had a general sense of what might be contributing to the hotspot on Coggeshall Street.
“It’s wide open and it’s heavily traveled, and people tend to speed because it’s wide open,” she said.
Think you’re out of the woods once you make it to Market Basket? Think again. There were 70 crashes in the grocery store parking lot or near it.
Route 6: A deadly corridor
Route 6 is another hotspot for crashes. One point on the road north of Buttonwood Park at the bottom of Oesting Street had 59 crashes in the last three years.
Eight of the city’s 19 fatal crashes happened on Route 6.
Transportation planners have known about issues on this road for years. Gregory Guertin was one of the SRPEDD planners who worked on a 2022 study of Route 6 in Westport and Dartmouth. He now works for the town of Smithfield, Rhode Island.
The main problem with Route 6, Guertin said, is that it’s a dysfunctional hybrid of two types of roads.
Some roads, like highways, are fast thoroughfares that prioritize getting cars from one point to another efficiently. Other roads, like in a neighborhood shopping district, are designed to allow easy access to homes and businesses for both cars and people.
“When you have something that’s trying to do both like Route 6, you end up with a road that does neither very well,” Guertin said.
After a spate of deadly crashes last summer, the local citizen group South Coast Places for People organized to advocate for better conditions on this corridor. Will Gardner, one of the group’s organizers, said communities tend to dwell on which individual person is at fault after a crash, instead of focusing on the ways road design can cause a trend in crashes.
“It’s not a coincidence, and it’s not only a result of individuals’ poor choices,” he said.
The group led state transportation officials to re-paint the road and add signage to prevent lane changes on the slippery grates of the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge. The state has also started a safety project focused on that area, which is now in the early planning stages.
Gardner said the group is celebrating those “small wins,” and plans to keep working with state officials so the safety project moves forward.
SRPEDD has partnered with the group — Route 6 is one of the agency’s highest safety priorities, Jones said.
Crashes are happening more often
The number of crashes in New Bedford has risen over the past year — there were 1,174 crashes during the first three months of this year, compared to 844 crashes during the same period in the previous year.
Crashes involving at least one parked car increased twice as much as crashes that happened in moving traffic.
Let’s zoom in on those parked car crashes.
There were more of them in February, the snowiest month by far in the three years of data. The Blizzard of 2026 dumped 37 inches of snow on the city that month, more than any other storm on record.
If we break down the contributing factors of the crash, we can see that road surface conditions — like a snowy, icy, or wet road — were linked to 123 parked car crashes from December to March.
More crashes don’t necessarily mean more injuries
It isn’t good news that more car crashes are happening, but luckily the data shows that there hasn’t been a significant increase in crashes that injure people. The overall increase is mainly driven by crashes that only cause property damage.
Pedestrian collisions happen throughout the city
People walking on foot were hit by cars and trucks 203 times in the last three years. Six of those incidents were fatal.
Most pedestrian collisions happened during the day.
Oh deer
Drivers hit deer 48 times in New Bedford over the past three years, mainly along Route 140 and I-195. Most deer-involved crashes happened at night.
New Bedford is a hotspot for these crashes, Jones said.
“I think we just have a lot of deer and not necessarily a lot of natural predators for them,” she said.
How transit planners use crash data
While drivers’ actions can contribute to crashes, there’s usually more than a single cause, said Guertin, the former transportation planner.
“It’s really the design of the infrastructure that essentially sets up those conditions that can make crashes more or less prevalent,” he said.
For example, a driver might get in a crash because they were speeding, but transportation planners would look deeper at the crash report and the setup of the road to understand why the driver felt like they could go so fast — some road designs make drivers more likely to step on the gas, while others force them to slow down.
There are lots of different interventions planners use to address trends they see in the data. A hotspot of nighttime crashes might mean the street needs more lighting. More pedestrian crashes could show that an area needs better sidewalks and crosswalks.
“You take all of that information and try to ascertain the story it’s telling about the particular road segment or intersection,” Guertin said. “And then, you can take all of that and implement road infrastructure treatments to try to resolve that to the best of your ability.”
SRPEDD’s periodic Regional Safety Action Plans are based on a deeply detailed analysis of crash data from 2019 to 2023. The plans identify dangerous areas, including a “top 100” list of dangerous intersections, by combining that crash data with other numbers, like traffic volume. Then, the plans suggest potential projects to address each location’s risks.
The agency’s latest intersection analysis highlighted six intersections on Coggeshall Street near Route 18, and three intersections along New Bedford’s segment of Route 6 as some of the most dangerous in the region.
Jones said it’s important to remember that crash data only gives a high-level view of where collisions are happening, and it takes much more analysis to explain why they’re happening. Still, she urged drivers to be careful around the hotspots.
“Knowing where the high-crash locations are, I try to avoid them,” she said.
What you can do about an unsafe road
A few different city departments are responsible for addressing traffic safety concerns in New Bedford, depending on the specific concern, according to Public Information Officer Jonathan Darling.
- If you see people speeding or driving through stop signs, contact the Police Department.
- If you want to request new infrastructure like a new stop sign or turn-only lane, contact the Traffic Commission.
- If tree branches are blocking a traffic sign or signal, contact the Department of Public Infrastructure.
- You can also submit requests for city services using the NBConnected app.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
More stories by Grace Ferguson
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