Warning: Driving a golf cart can be hazardous

By Dave Kindred
Illustration By Matt Collins February 2008

Everyone who has driven a golf cart has experienced that moment of uncertainty when it's clear that something really bad is about to happen, only we don't know what.

The fright usually occurs on a steep downhill grade when the cart has achieved its greatest speed. The driver's brain is idling away on its Charlize Theron fantasy. And dead ahead, suddenly, there's a switchback turn on a cliff's edge above a lake.

Uh-oh.

What we do then is put one leg out while grabbing hold of the roof in the position known as Hoping to God the Parachute Opens.

Common sense would keep us from such predicaments, but if we were practitioners of common sense we wouldn't play golf at all; we'd take up a hobby less dangerous and more relaxing, such as plucking quills from feral porcupines. Alas, some of the inevitable misadventures have produced headlines of late: "Golf cart plummets from cliff; man killed."

"Golf cart strikes, kills 79-year-old Oregon woman."

"Man impaled in golf course accident."

"Retired Harper official drowns in golf accident."

"Father of 9-year-old who killed woman with golf cart won't be jailed."

And:

"Heard the one about the blind golf cart driver?"

A Georgia man drank a bunch of beer before inviting a blind friend to drive his golf cart. The intrepid pair scootched over to make room for the guide dog, a golden retriever. As if talking a neophyte pilot out of the sky, the beery man talked the blind man through the twists and turns of Peachtree City, an Atlanta suburb with about 90 miles of cartpaths and 9,000 carts. The ride ended when they smacked into a parked car, giving rise to the thought: They maybe should've let the dog drive.

And this:

"Bill Murray busted for DUI in golf cart."

In Sweden to promote a movie, the actor appeared at the Scandinavian Masters golf tournament, then used a golf cart to ferry partygoers home through the streets of Stockholm. A wire service quoted Murray saying the police "assumed I was drunk, and I explained to them that I was a golfer." Oh, yeah, like that always works.

All this is not to suggest that driving a golf cart must lead to catastrophe. Sometimes it leads only to professional humiliation and small broken bones, as in the cases of race-car drivers Jimmie Johnson and Paul Tracy.

When Johnson, one of NASCAR's stars, broke his left wrist in December 2006, he first said, "I was in a golf cart, and the driver took a sharp turn. I wasn't holding on tight enough, landed awkwardly on the ground and heard a little pop."

Every word true, except for "in." Johnson was on the cart--spread-eagled on its roof. A Florida newspaper, The Citrus County Chronicle, reported that the cart driver hit a berm, and Johnson was launched. A spokesperson finally admitted, "Jimmie was horsing around . . . "