Sen. Holdman has introduced SB 189 which would allow golf carts to operate on non-Interstate highways. It has to be operated in a manner that does not impede traffic or endanger life or property. In most cases, it has to be operated “(i) in the right hand lane available for traffic or (ii) as close as practicable to the right hand curb or edge of the highway.” As drafted, I’m not really sure where item (ii) would be a limiting factor. Unless you’re driving the wrong way on a one-way isn’t there always going to be a right hand lane available for traffic such that this doesn’t obligate you to crowd the curb? Or maybe item (ii) is only applicable on one-lane one ways (since there is no right hand lane)? Neither items (i) or (ii) are applicable if the golf cart is passing another vehicle or is preparing for a left turn.
Maybe I just don’t live in the right places, but how necessary is this legislation? I guess you’re not supposed to think this way when writing laws, but seems like if the golf cart isn’t causing problems, local law enforcement is probably going to look the other way.
A car bumps into one of those things at 10 mph, and it’s curtains because they rarely wear head protection or seat belts. I wonder how many horror stories there are about those things. But I agree that, aside from more restrictive legislation, there aren’t enough of them to develop some sort of code. Besides, isn’t this a short session, where they should be concentrating on problems taking us down the toilet? This is re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The best analogy to a golf cart on the roadway is an Amish buggy on the roadway. On county roads and highways with little traffic. But when Amish drive their buggies into and around the strip mall areas of large towns, the present a hazard to traffic.
I do not think that golf carts will present a similar threat as their use is more confined to lake cabin areas, retirement housing communities, and perhaps, strangely enough, golf courses.
We have golf cart friendly communities in our lake area neck of the Hoosier woods and they can be dangerous. Too often children are driving them and they dart out into traffic. When taking my son to church camp one day last summer, a cart pops over a hill on a narrow lake road and not necessarily staying far enough right in her lane. What I found troubling is that the driver, a woman, was holding an infant in her lap with one hand and driving with the other. Not safe at all.
Whoa. If the actions you describe are commonplace, the law should be shelved. But along the comment I made about Amish buggies, the contraptions that the farm with are, using good lawerly words, inherently dangerous. The Amish mount old one head tractor mounted corn heads or small old combine heads on wagons that are pulled by teams of horses. The machines are powered by pony mowers. The driver of the team, men, boys, teenage girls, stand on platform between the team and the device. If the team driver would fall off of the platform, they would likely be drawn up into the corn head or combine.
We have a significant Amish community here in Steuben and even more so to our west in LaGrange. Sadly, too many Amish people are injured and killed while out on the roads, but typically it is when a vehicle hits them in their buggies or on their bicycles.