BY JIMMY SHOCKLEY, Eastern Shore Post —
Cape Charles’ summer emphasis on golf cart safety yielded a number of tickets for traffic infractions and even more opportunities for education, the town’s police chief said.
“Once people start seeing them be enforced, they think a little more,” town Police Chief Jim Pruitt said of traffic laws surrounding golf carts.
Cape Charles is known as a place to relax and unwind — but in recent years, many have treated the laws surrounding the use of golf carts within the town in a similarly loose fashion.
Pruitt said in June that the enforcement of traffic laws pertaining to golf carts would be increased. He said the result was a lot more people adhering to the laws.
The crackdown came after police wrote tickets to golf cart operators for a plethora of offenses in the last few years — unsecured children, underage drivers, driving outside of town limits, driving with open alcoholic beverages, and others.
Pruitt said the most common ticket written to golf cart operators this summer — other than parking tickets — was people driving outside of the designated 25 mile-per-hour zone.
Golf carts are only allowed on roads where the speed limit is 25 or lower.
Pruitt said the second most common ticket written was for unsecured children under one year of age.
He said golf carts require child seats for young children — just like other vehicles — and that some people instead opt to hold young kids while driving or as a passenger, which is illegal.
Pruitt said that this practice has lessened since the laws have started being more closely enforced.
“I saw a lot of carts with rear-facing child seats this year,” he said.
From May through August this year the town also recorded 229 parking violations by golf carts, Pruitt said. He said many offenses were corrected without being recorded as tickets.
He said officers issued warnings to those improperly parked on the beachfront for a month prior to issuing parking tickets.
Pruitt said the warnings were mainly issued to those squeezing golf carts into spots between cars perpendicular to the flow of traffic.
These warnings were made so they were visible to others passing by in golf carts, in order to discourage others thinking of doing the same.
Overall, the higher level of enforcement helped and fewer tickets began to be issued because there were fewer offenders.
From June through August of this year, Pruitt heard of no reports of a golf cart driver holding a child less than one year old with one hand and driving with the other.
“That really bothered me,” he said of such offenders.
