The dangers of golf carts
Golf carts offer very little protection. They don’t have airbags, doors, and sometimes seatbelts. There are around 15,000 golf cart related injuries and 600 deaths per year in the USA. These can be something as small as a cut, to broken bones or severe head trauma.
There are also a ton of hazards associated with golf carts. For example, making sharp turns could accidentally throw a passenger out. However, if you drive safely, then you will avoid all of these things.
“Know the rules of the road and follow them. Cars are expecting you to act like them and if you don’t, something could happen.” LHS school resource officer Matt Wagner said. However, a ton of people unfortunately do not drive safely.
Underage Drivers
The legal age to drive a golf cart in Missouri is 16. More than half of the injuries are due to underage golf cart drivers. Some researchers decided to conduct a 10-year study on these injuries. They found that a total of 63,501 injuries that children got were due to these golf carts.
Even news stations are addressing this issue. On July 18, 2023, ABC News reported about an incident in Florida. A 3-year-old drove a golf cart, hit his 7-year-old brother, and put him in the hospital where he later died. This is just one of the many underage golf cart drivers that caused accidents.
Golf Cart Crashes
Golf cart crashes do not just happen in Florida, but they can happen anywhere to anyone.
On Jan. 29, 2021, then 17-year-old Carly Williams was at her friend Anna’s house in Florence, Miss. when one of her friends decided that it would be a good idea to drive the golf cart Anna owned. One of Carly’s friends took the wheel at 9 p.m. and they started driving without any of them having their seatbelts on. Then, at 9:16 p.m., the golf cart came around a curve in the woods, hit a curb, and chipped the back of the golf cart. The back of the golf cart hit a tree, which shot them straight into another tree.
When that happened, her friend’s dad heard it, and came back there and got them. One of her friends, Brenna, hit her head and got knocked out. Carly went down sideways and the right side of her face was busted up. However, nothing happened to the 16 year old driver.
“My right eyebrow was torn, it was busted up and I had a total of 25 stitches,” Carly said. “I had a blood clot in my cheek. About three months after I had to have plastic surgery, where they went in and did a nerve graph on the right side of my face.”
There are many incidents just like Carly’s everyday. Underage driving golf carts can cause many problems.
“It is a huge problem in our community and is causing many issues,” freshman Brooklyn Donohue said.
This is why we need to be careful driving and operating golf carts, and not entrust them to underage, inexperienced drivers.
