With our increased population here on the coast during the summer months, the potential for accidents skyrockets — more motorists, more pedestrians, more cyclists, more boating traffic.

On the busy roadways, there are so many near-misses it isn’t even funny, and, unfortunately, some aren’t lucky enough to escape with a near-miss. Rear-end collisions are common. It only takes a couple of seconds for a distracted driver to find the car in front of him has either slowed considerably or stopped altogether. If you vehicle is equipped with good, strong, old-fashioned bumpers, you can often avoid serious damage. In the other hand, even a small bump can cost big bucks with today’s newer cars.

One of our pet peeves is intersections or business entrances/exits in which drivers’ visibility is blocked by flowers, shrubs or signs. Some of our crosswalks are also located in places where it’s next to impossible to see pedestrians until they’re well out into the crosswalk. Often, parked vehicles block visibility. We had a near-miss ourselves last week, thanks to flowers and shrubs, at the junction of Park Street, Union Street and Atlantic Avenue, as we were stopped at the stop sign on Park. A jogger headed toward the East Side was just entering the crosswalk as we started out into the roadway. She didn’t see us, we didn’t see her. Luckily, we both stopped in time. If not, we could have seriously hurt her, and the responsibility would have been ours.

While it was not the case in this instance, pedestrians often don’t bother to use caution when crossing. They have the right of way, and they know it. It disturbs us that some youngsters aren’t being taught to still look for oncoming cars before entering a crosswalk. Some cyclists, likewise, don’t follow any of the rules and place the burden on accident prevention on the motorist. It’s far too common to see inexperienced cyclists going full speed ahead the wrong way on a one-way street. We keep hoping that more and more bike paths will be built in the years to come to protect the safety of both motorists and pedestrians, because the “share the road’’ philosophy only works when there is plenty of room for both cyclists and motorists.

On the water, as on land, all boat operators don’t follow the rules. There are no traffic lanes, no stop signs, no warnings of danger, so they throw caution to the wind and off they go. Boating can be loads of fun, but it also can be potentially disastrous. We are also experiencing a rapid growth in kayaking all along the Maine coast with increasing mishaps. We believe that a flag several feet high on the stern of a kayak would improve the odds of spotting one. We made such a recommendation a few years ago and riled some kayak owners and businesses. We didn’t intend to create any problems, only felt it would make it easier to see a kayak approaching. Once they’re in a blind spot under the bow of a larger vessel, it increases the odds of a collision. Boaters constantly comment on near misses with kayakers, and the odds are good we’ll be seeing more and more kayakers in the years to come, whom we welcome.

We’re into the busiest part of the summer in the next few weeks. Use caution. Let’s make it accident-free vacation time.