Golf Carts Get Street Legal

Initially gaining popularity with elite golfers in the 50s and 60s, golf carts are now making their way into all sorts of unlikely places. Employees in airports, warehouses, movie sets and resorts have all gotten mobile with golf carts over the past decade. Residents of careless communities and tropical islands have been using them on the sly as a cheap way of getting from a to b for years. But perhaps one of the most surprising places to find golf carts these days is on the streets of America.

Deeply contrary to the culture of speed, golf carts and the people who drive them are demanding a piece of the road for themselves - and they’re getting it. In many ways the timing is absolutely right.

Designed to travel at a leisurely pace and run on electricity, golf carts leave a significantly smaller ecological footprint than the average vehicle. The first electric vehicle available to consumers, golf carts are compact and cheap to run, quiet, easy to drive and non-polluting. They’re also painfully slow. Most golf carts top out at speeds of 15 mph with the pedal to the metal. But if you’ve got time to get to where you’re going, what’s the problem?

Many communities have simply connected the dots between their warm weather, a preponderance of golf courses and retirees, and the sheer efficiency of these vehicles by building roads and pathways dedicated just to them. Much like bike lanes in other cities, golf cart lanes are showing up in communities all over Florida, Arizona and California.

According to a new york times article, golf cart sales to individuals have doubled over the last 10 years, a phenomenon largely due to a change in US legislation. Ever since the National Highway Traffic Safety administration allowed "low speed vehicles" such as golf carts, to travel up to 25 mph on roads with speed limits up tp 35 mph in 1998, golf carts have been slowly moving off the golf course and into people’s garages.

Of course, you have to pimp your ride before you’re legal. Road worthy carts have to be outfitted with seat belts, windshields, turn signals and brake lights before they can legally tear up the asphalt.

In 1999, Rancho Mirage CA was one of the first American cities to make Golf Carts part of the municipal scene when the city adopted a program allowing drivers to travel the streets in their carts. The city has designated golf cart lanes and paths that traverse the downtown area and skirt the entrances to some of the most exclusive designer golf courses and country clubs in America. Carrying golf clubs, groceries and purse dogs, residents cruise roads named after the icons that invented this glamorous slow-moving golf life: Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Ginger Rogers, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra. With scarves streaming in the slow desert breeze, this is SoCal at it’s finest.

The city is no stranger to the ways of the golf cart. The Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage is said to be the first place to ever see a powered vehicle on the fairway. In the 1950s, the likes of Desi Arnez and Bing Crosby were wheeling around the Thunderbird greens in the first 3 wheeled electric golf carts Americans had ever seen. To have the modern cousins of these early vehicles taking over the streets of Rancho Mirage 60 years later is not really surprising. Some would wonder what took them so long.